Alfred Ramani
Alfred Ramani
DOI 10.1007/s11005-016-0822-1
Abstract. We study classes of mappings which do not belong to the QRT family. We obtain
several integrable non-autonomous forms of these mappings extending previous results
where only linearisable cases were found. Using our recently introduced method of singu-
larity confinement with full deautonomisation, we analyse a mapping which, while non-
integrable, does possess confined singularities and show that our method makes it possible
to obtain the exact value of its algebraic entropy.
1. Introduction
The QRT mapping [1], introduced by Quispel, Roberts and Thompson, is one of
the fundamental integrable discrete systems. It has been the par excellence testing
ground for discrete integrability criteria and has been instrumental in the deriva-
tion of discrete Painlevé equations. In its symmetric form the QRT mapping can
be written as
f 1 (xn ) − xn−1 f 2 (xn )
xn+1 = (1)
f 2 (xn ) − xn−1 f 3 (xn )
where the f i are specific quartic polynomials in x. The symmetric QRT mapping
possesses an invariant which can be written as a ratio of two biquadratic polyno-
mials in xn and xn−1 :
2 x 2 +β x
α0 xn−1 2 2
n 0 n−1 x n (x n−1 +x n )+γ0 (x n−1 + x n ) + 0 x n−1 x n + ζ0 (x n−1 + x n ) + μ0
K (xn , xn−1 ) = ,
2 x2 + β x
α1 xn−1 2 2
n 1 n−1 x n (x n−1 + x n ) + γ1 (x n−1 + x n ) + 1 x n−1 x n + ζ1 (x n−1 + x n ) + μ1
(2)
where the invariance relation is K (xn , xn−1 ) = K (xn+1 , xn ). The solution of the
QRT mapping can be expressed in terms of elliptic functions. An asymmetric form
does also exist and is presented as a system of two coupled first-order mappings.
434 ALFRED RAMANI AND BASILE GRAMMATICOS