The structure of mode-locking regions of piecewise-linear continuous maps: II. Skew sawtooth maps

Abstract: In two-parameter bifurcation diagrams of piecewise-linear continuous maps on $\mathbb{R}^N$, mode-locking regions typically have points of zero width known as shrinking points. Near any shrinking point, but outside the associated mode-locking region, a significant proportion of parameter space can be usefully partitioned into a two-dimensional array of nearly-hyperbolic annular sectors. The purpose of this paper is to show that in these sectors the dynamics is well-approximated by a three-parameter family of skew sawtooth circle maps, where the relationship between the skew sawtooth maps and the $N$-dimensional map is fixed within each sector. The skew sawtooth maps are continuous, degree-one, and piecewise-linear, with two different slopes. They approximate the stable dynamics of the $N$-dimensional map with an error that goes to zero with the distance from the shrinking point. The results explain the complicated radial pattern of periodic, quasi-periodic, and chaotic dynamics that occurs near shrinking points.