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Section4.1Linearization near an attractive fixed point

The simplest type of periodic orbit is that of an attractive fixed point. That is, we have a point \(z_0\in\mathbb C\) and an analytic function \(f\)defined in a neighborhood of \(z_0\) such that \(f(z_0)=z_0\) and \(0 < |f'(z_0)| < 1\text{.}\) In this case, the function looks like the linear function \(L(z)=\lambda z\text{,}\) where \(\lambda = f'(z_0)\text{.}\) A simpler statement, whose proof follows immediately from the definition of the derivative is that \(f\) is contractive near \(z_0\)

While nice, we can make a much more precise statement. In particular, \(f\) is analytically conjugate to a linear function \(L\text{.}\) Note that the following theorem Theorem 2 is stated assuming that the fixed point is zero. The fact that this extends to any fixed point is essentially the content of exercise Exercise 4.6.1.

This is a tremendously important theorem with several well known proofs. We present two.