We study countably piecewise continuous, piecewise monotone interval maps. We establish a necessary and sufficient criterion for the existence of a non-decreasing semiconjugacy to a map of constant slope in terms of the existence of an eigenvector of an operator acting on a space of measures. Then we give sufficient conditions under which this criterion is not satisfied. Finally, we give examples of maps not semiconjugate to a map of constant slope via a non-decreasing map. Our examples are continuous and transitive.

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How can we interpret the infimum of Lipschitz constants in a conjugacy class of interval maps? For positive entropy maps, the exponential of the topological entropy gives a well-known lower bound. We show that for piecewise monotone interval maps as well as for C ∞ interval maps, these two quantities are equal, but for countably piecewise monotone maps, the inequality can be strict. Moreover, in the topologically mixing and Markov case, we characterize the infimum of Lipschitz constants as the exponential of the Salama entropy of a certain reverse Markov chain associated with the map. Dynamically, this number represents the exponential growth rate of the number of iterated preimages of nearly any point.

Abstract. For a transitive countably piecewise monotone Markov interval map we consider the question whether there exists a conjugate map of constant slope. The answer varies depending on whether the map is continuous or only piecewise continuous, whether it is mixing or not, what slope we consider, and whether the conjugate map is defined on a bounded interval, half-line or the whole real line (with the infinities included).

We study continuous countably (strictly) monotone maps defined on a tame graph, i.e., a special Peano continuum for which the set containing branchpoints and endpoints has a countable closure. In our investigation we confine ourselves to the countable Markov case. We show a necessary and sufficient condition under which a locally eventually onto, countably Markov map f of a tame graph G is conjugate to a constant slope map g of a countably affine tame graph. In particular, we show that in the case of a Markov map f that corresponds to recurrent transition matrix, the condition is satisfied for constant slope e htop(f ) , where h top (f ) is the topological entropy of f . Moreover, we show that in our class the topological entropy h top (f ) is achievable through horseshoes of the map f . Classification: Primary 37E25; Secondary 37B40, 37B45.