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# Stable manifolds of holomorphic diffeomorphisms

## 0. Introduction

Let $`M`$ be a complex manifold and fix once and for all a complete Riemannian metric on $`M`$ and a holomorphic diffeomorphism, or automorphism, $`f\mathrm{Diff}_𝒪(M)`$. Recall that the *stable manifold* $`W_p^s`$ through a point $`pM`$ with bounded orbit is defined by

$$W_p^s:=\left\{xM\right|\mathrm{dist}(f^Nx,f^Np)C\rho ^N\mathrm{for}N0\},$$

where $`\rho =\rho _p<1`$ and $`C=C_p>0`$. It turns out that often $`W_p^s`$ is an immersed complex manifold. Assuming this to be the case, the following problem was posed by E. Bedford \[B\].

Problem: Determine the complex structure of the stable manifolds of $`f`$.

In many cases it can be shown that $`W_p^s`$ is a monotone union of balls, and this in turn implies \[Br\] that it is diffeomorphic to real Euclidean space. Moreover, by the contracting nature of the dynamics, one sees that the Kobayashi pseudometric of $`W_p^s`$ vanishes identically. However, when $`dim(W_p^s)3`$, it is not possible to deduce only from these properties that $`W_p^s`$ is biholomorphic to Euclidean space. For example, there exist monotone unions of balls which are not Stein \[F\]. (The question of Steinness of monotone unions of balls in complex dimension 2 is open.) When dim$`(W_p^s)=1`$, the Uniformization Theorem implies that $`W_p^s`$ is biholomorphic to $`𝐂`$ \[BLS, W\].

The main results of this paper are proved in the non-uniform setting, i.e. with respect to compactly supported invariant measures. More precisely, we say that a subset $`AM`$ is *invariant* if $`fA=A`$, and that it has *total measure* if $`\mu (A)=1`$ for every compactly supported invariant probability measure $`\mu `$.

Our main objective in this paper is to prove the following theorem.

###### Theorem 1.

There exists an invariant Borel set $`𝒦(f)M`$ of total measure such that for every $`p𝒦(f)`$, $`W_p^s`$ is a complex manifold biholomorphic to complex Euclidean space.

Let us clarify things a little further. The set $`𝒦(f)`$ is the set of so-called *Oseledec points* or *regular points*. Its existence is a part of the well known and fundamental theorem of V. Oseledec \[O\]. The equally fundamental work of Pesin \[P\] states in part that the stable manifold passing through each Oseledec point $`p𝒦(f)`$ is an immersed (complex) manifold. What we show is that for each $`p𝒦(f)`$, $`W_p^s`$ is biholomorphic to $`𝐂^k`$, where $`k=\mathrm{dim}_𝐂W_p^s`$.

We postpone to Section 3 a more detailed discussion of the results of Oseledec and Pesin which we will use in this paper. For now, however, we content ourselves with saying that every point in $`𝒦(f)`$ has a bounded orbit, although $`𝒦(f)`$ itself need not be bounded. Moreover, we emphasize that, to have a non-trivial result, it is necessary to have at least one invariant measure with compact support, but this is guaranteed to happen once $`f`$ leaves invariant a bounded subset of $`M`$.

Our approach to proving Theorem 1 is to associate to the dynamical system $`f`$ a certain “unraveled” dynamical system, and then conjugate the latter to a much simpler (polynomial) dynamical system on the so-called stable distribution. To state the result more precisely we need to develop some notation and concepts, which we now proceed to do.

Recall that the stable distribution $`E^s`$ is a family of vector subspaces $`E_p^s`$ of $`TM_p`$ on which $`df`$ is asymptotically contracting: for $`pM`$ with bounded orbit, $`E_p^s`$ is given by

$$E_p^s:=\left\{vTM_p\right||df^Nv|C\rho ^N\mathrm{for}N0\},$$

where $`\rho =\rho _p<1`$ and $`C=C_p>0`$. Notice that this exponential decay is not uniform, i.e. $`p\rho _p`$, $`pC_p`$ and even $`pdimE_p^s`$ could be discontinuous.

From here on, let $`𝒦(f)`$ denote the set of Oseledec points (whose well known definition is recalled in Section 3). If the stable manifold $`W_p^s`$ defined above exists as an immersed submanifold of $`M`$, then $`(TW_p^s)_p=E_p^s`$. In view of Pesin’s work mentioned above, this is the case whenever $`p𝒦(f)`$.

Next we discuss what was meant by ”unraveled” above. To this end, even though it might happen that for $`qp`$ the two stable manifolds $`W_p^s`$ and $`W_q^s`$ intersect and thus agree, we treat $`W_p^s`$ and $`W_q^s`$ as distinct stable manifolds. More precisely, we define the set

$$𝒲^s:=\underset{p𝒦(f)}{}W_p^s.$$
(0.1)
Since $`W_{fp}^s=fW_p^s`$, $`f`$ induces a bijection on $`𝒲^s`$, still denoted $`f`$, which is holomorphic on the fibers. (We will topologize $`𝒲^s`$ and $`E^s`$ shortly.) We note again that the bundle $`𝒲^s`$ is defined only over the topological space $`𝒦(f)`$ of Oseledec points. The following is our main result.

###### Theorem 2.

There exists a measurable isomorphism $`\mathrm{\Psi }:𝒲^sE^s|𝒦(f)`$ and a bundle automorphism $`P:E^s|𝒦(f)E^s|𝒦(f)`$ such that, for every $`p𝒦(f)`$,

1. $`P_p:E_p^sE_{fp}^s`$ is a polynomial automorphism;
2. $`P_p^N0`$ locally uniformly on $`E_p^s`$;
3. $`\mathrm{\Psi }_p:=\mathrm{\Psi }|W_p^s`$ is a biholomorphism of $`W_p^s`$ onto $`E_p^s`$ and $`(d\mathrm{\Psi }_p)_p=\mathrm{id}`$;
4. $`\mathrm{\Psi }f\mathrm{\Psi }^1=P`$ on $`𝒦(f)`$.

###### Remark.

Note first that (3) implies Theorem 1. Secondly, we do not claim that $`p\mathrm{deg}(P_p)`$ is constant or even bounded. However, it is constant along orbits. Finally, the map $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ turns out to be slightly better than measurable. It is slowly varying; a concept we shall discuss more thoroughly in Section 4.

We now return to the question of topologizing $`𝒲^s`$ and $`E^s`$. Let

$$\mathrm{dist}(x,y)=\{\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{dist}_p(x,y)\hfill & \hfill x,yW_p^s\\ \mathrm{dist}_p(x,p)+\mathrm{d}(p,q)+\mathrm{dist}_q(q,y)\hfill & \hfill xW_p^s,yW_q^s\end{array}$$

$$\mathrm{dist}(v,w)=\{\begin{array}{cc}|vw|\hfill & \hfill v,wE_p^s\\ |v|+\mathrm{d}(p,q)+|w|\hfill & \hfill vE_p^s,wE_q^s\end{array}$$

The function $`\mathrm{dist}_p`$ is a distance on $`W_p^s`$ associated to the complete Riemann metric on $`M`$ (so that $`\mathrm{dist}_p`$ recovers the intrinsic topology of $`W_p^s`$). The function d appearing on the right hand side of these definitions is the same for both functions. In the case of Theorem 2, we shall take d$`(p,q)=\delta _{p,q}`$, i.e. $`𝒲^s`$ is the disjoint union of all the stable manifolds. We refer to this as the *discrete case*. Later on, it is also useful to take d to be the Riemannian distance on $`M`$. We shall refer to this as the *bouquet case*. To these topologies we associate the Borel sets, and it is with respect to this $`\sigma `$-algebra that $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is measurable.

We turn now to the hyperbolic picture. Recall that $`f\mathrm{Diff}_𝒪(M)`$ is *hyperbolic on a compact set* $`K`$ if $`K`$ is invariant and there exists a continuous splitting

$$TM|_K=E^sE^u$$

with the following properties.

1. $`E_p^s`$ and $`E_p^u`$ have constant rank for all $`pK`$, say $`k`$ and $`nk`$ ($`n=dimM`$);
2. $`df(E_p^s)=E_{fp}^s`$ and $`df(E_p^u)=E_{fp}^u`$ for all $`pK`$;
3. there exist positive constants $`C`$ and $`\rho `$, with $`\rho <1`$, so that, for all $`pK`$ and all $`N0`$

$$df^N|E_p^sC\rho ^N\mathrm{and}df^N|E_p^uC^1\rho ^N.$$

In this case we write

$$𝒲^s=\underset{pK}{}W_p^s\mathrm{and}E^s=\underset{pK}{}E_p^s.$$

Then $`E^s`$ is a continuous vector bundle and the set of (local) stable manifolds form a lamination near $`K`$ (see, e.g. \[S\]). (We are abusing language slightly here: we are interested in the restriction of $`E^s`$ to the set $`K`$ of hyperbolicity, but $`E^s`$ is being written instead of $`E^s|K`$.)

Theorem 1 implies that $`W_p^s`$ is biholomorphic to $`𝐂^k`$ for every $`p𝒦(f)K`$. Moreover there are always invariant measures on an invariant compact set, so the set $`𝒦(f)K`$ is nonempty: it contains every periodic point in $`K`$ and many more points (unless $`K`$ is a finite set). Nevertheless, one would like to prove that *every* stable manifold through $`K`$ is biholomorphic to $`𝐂^k`$. We conjecture that this is indeed the case. The main problem in proving this is that even though $`df^N`$ uniformly contracts vectors in $`E_p^s`$, $`pK`$, the exact rate of contraction can be highly nonconstant. In fact, controlling the (asymptotic) rates of contraction within $`E^s`$ is central to our approach.

On the other hand, the conjecture above is easy to prove if an (unfortunately quite strong) hypothesis is placed on the map $`f`$. If $`A`$ is the restriction to $`E^s`$ of $`df`$, let

$$L_+:=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim\; sup}\underset{pK}{sup}N^1\mathrm{log}A_p^N\text{and}L_{}:=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim\; inf}\underset{pK}{inf}N^1\mathrm{log}A_p^N.$$

Note that $`L_{}L_+<0`$. We say that $`f`$ is *equi-contracting* if $`2L_+<L_{}`$.

Note, in particular, that if $`f`$ has one dimensional stable manifolds, then $`f`$ is automatically equi-contracting.

###### Theorem 3.

If $`f`$ is hyperbolic and equi-contracting on a compact set $`K`$, then there exists a homeomorphism $`\mathrm{\Psi }:𝒲^sE^s`$ over $`K`$ such that

1. for every $`pK`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_p:=\mathrm{\Psi }|W_p^s`$ is a biholomorphism of $`W_p^s`$ onto $`E_p^s`$ and $`(d\mathrm{\Psi }_p)_p=\mathrm{id}`$;
2. $`\mathrm{\Psi }f\mathrm{\Psi }^1=df|E^s.`$

In Theorem 3 we use the bouquet topology on $`𝒲^s`$ and $`E^s`$. Note that the equi-contracting hypothesis implies that $`f`$ can be brought to a *linear* form as opposed to the more general polynomial form given by Theorem 2.

Regarding history, while Oseledec/Pesin theory has been used in complex dynamics before (see e.g. \[BD\],\[BLS\]), to our knowledge this is the first application to the study of the complex structure of stable manifolds in higher dimensions. When $`f`$ has a fixed point, the fact that $`f`$ is conjugate to a normal form is due to S. Sternberg \[St\], and (independently, though much later) to Rosay and Rudin \[RR\] in the holomorphic case with essentially the same proof. (We note that, even though Sternberg’s theorem is stated for an attracting fixed point, say $`p`$, one can reduce to this case by restricting $`f`$ to its stable manifold $`W_p^s`$, since the latter is invariant in the fixed point case.) The condition for linearization was known to C. Siegel \[Si\]. In the general, non-stationary case, very little seems to have been done. The main work we know of is due to M. Guysinsky and A. Katok \[G, GK\]. However, they place rather strong hypotheses on the spectrum of the of $`df`$ which, while sufficient (and perhaps more so necessary) for their applications, would be much too strong for the problem we are interested in here.

Roughly speaking, our approach combines the ideas from the proof of Sternberg’s Theorem with techniques from Oseledec-Pesin Theory. The proof of Sternberg’s theorem, as in \[St\] or \[RR\], uses linear algebra to split the stable space $`E_p^s`$ into invariant subspaces where $`df`$ has an essentially fixed rate of contraction (given by the eigenvalues of $`df|E_p^s`$). In the setting of Theorem 2 we use Oseledec-Pesin theory in order to control the rate of contraction of $`df`$.

The organization of the paper is as follows. In Section 1 we define a continuous family of uniformly sized charts for the stable manifolds, and in Section 2 we prove Theorem 3. In Section 3 we state the results we use from the Oseledec/Pesin theory and in Section 4 we set up the slowly varying formalism, working out some useful lemmas and propositions. In Section 5 we prove the existence of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ locally. This section is the main step in the proof of Theorem 2, the latter being completed in Section 6.

Acknowledgments We thank John-Erik Fornæss and Ralf Spatzier for their interest in this project and for interesting discussions, and more particularly we thank Ralf for also directing us to many useful references on related results in real dynamics. We are also grateful to Charles Favre, Nessim Sibony and the referee for many helpful comments and suggestions.

## 1. Holomorphic exponential maps I. Hyperbolic case

In this section, we construct a continuous (in $`p`$) family of biholomorphic maps $`\chi _p`$ from a neighborhood of $`0_p`$ in $`E_p^s`$ into $`W_p^s`$. To this end, let $`f\mathrm{Diff}_𝒪(M)`$ be hyperbolic on a compact set $`KM`$. For $`ϵ>0`$, set

$$E_p^s(ϵ):=\{vE_p^s||v|<ϵ\}\mathrm{and}E^s(ϵ):=\underset{pK}{}E_p^s(ϵ),$$

the latter equipped with the bouquet topology discussed in the Introduction.

###### Proposition 1.1.

There exists $`ϵ>0`$ and a continuous mapping $`\chi :E^s(ϵ)𝒲^s`$ which maps each $`E_p^s(ϵ)`$ biholomorphically into $`W_p^s`$, maps the zero vector $`0_pE_p^s`$ to $`pW_p^s`$, and satisfies $`d(\chi |E_p^s)_{0_p}=\mathrm{id}_{E_p^s}`$.

Remark. Originally, we had a rather complicated and not even completely general proof of this proposition. We thank C. Favre for showing us a much simpler and complete proof, which we now present.

###### Proof of Proposition 1.1..

As mentioned before, it is shown in \[S\] that $`𝒲^s`$ gives a lamination near $`K`$. Cover $`K`$ by a finite number of balls $`B_i,1il`$. Let

$$\xi _i:E^s(ϵ_i)|B_iK𝒲^s,1il$$

be local parameterizations of $`𝒲^s`$ near $`KB_i`$ such that, for all $`pB_iK`$, $`\xi _i(0_p)=p`$ and $`d\xi _i(0_p)=id`$. Such parameterizations exist if the balls $`B_i`$ are taken small enough. Write $`ϵ:=\mathrm{min}\{ϵ_i;1il\}`$. Let $`𝒲_i^s(ϵ)=\xi _i(E^s(ϵ)|B_iK)`$ be the image of $`E^s(ϵ)|B_iK`$ under $`\xi _i`$ , and set $`𝒲^s(ϵ)=_i𝒲_i^s(ϵ)`$. Finally, let $`\{\phi _i;1il\}`$ be a partition of unity subordinate to the covering $`\{B_i;1il\}`$ of $`K`$. Then the map $`\chi :E^s(ϵ)𝒲^s(ϵ)`$ whose inverse is given by the formula

$$\chi ^1(x)=\underset{1il}{}\phi _i(p)\xi _i^1(x),xW_p^s,$$

has the desired properties. ∎

## 2. Proof of Theorem 3

We first sketch the basic idea of the proof. Let

$$A:=df|E^s$$

denote the restriction to $`E^s`$ of $`df`$ and, with $`\chi `$ as in Proposition 1.1, set

$$F:=\chi ^1f\chi \mathrm{and}𝒲^s(ϵ):=\chi (E^s(ϵ)).$$

Here and below, in order to avoid referring to the specific coordinates $`v`$ chosen on $`E^s`$, we use the notation $`O(m)`$ in place of the more common $`O(|v|^m)`$.

We want to show that the map $`A^N\chi ^1f^N`$ converges, locally uniformly on $`𝒲^s`$ as $`N\mathrm{}`$, to a biholomorphic map. (Note that, because of the use of $`\chi ^1`$, the former map is only defined on some compact subset of $`𝒲^s`$.) Since $`A^1F\mathrm{id}=O(2)`$, we have, on a given compact subset of $`𝒲^s`$ and for $`N`$ sufficiently large, that

$`A^{(N+1)}\chi ^1f^{N+1}A^N\chi ^1f^N`$ $`=A^N\left(A^1F\mathrm{id}\right)\chi ^1f^N`$
$`e^{(L_{}+2L_+)N},`$
where the last estimate is uniform on compact sets. By the equi-contracting hypothesis, this implies locally uniform convergence. Injectivity and surjectivity of the limit map are then easily established. The details are as follows.

Given $`\delta >0`$ with $`L_++\delta <0`$ there exists $`N_0𝐍`$ and $`ϵ>0`$ such that

$$|F^{N_0}v|e^{(L_++\delta )N_0}|v|\mathrm{whenever}vE^s(ϵ).$$

This follows from the definition of $`L_+`$ and the fact that $`(dF_p)_p=A_p`$. Now set

$$C:=sup\{|F^jv|/|v|;0j<N_0,vE^s(ϵ)\}.$$

For $`N0`$, write $`N=kN_0+j`$ with $`0j<N_0`$. Then

$$|F^Nv|=|F^j(F^{kN_0}v)|C|F^{kN_0}v|Ce^{(L_++\delta )kN_0}|v|,$$

and so there exists $`N_1=N_1(\delta )`$ such that for all $`NN_1`$,

$$|F^Nv|e^{(L_++2\delta )N},vE^s(ϵ)$$

Now consider a compact $`J𝒲^s`$. By the contracting nature of $`f`$ there exists $`n0`$ such that $`f^n(J)𝒲^s(ϵ)`$. Since $`\chi ^1`$ is continuous on $`𝒲^s(ϵ)`$, the above estimate implies that there exists $`N_2=N_2(J,\delta )N_1+n`$ such that for all $`NN_2`$,

$$|\chi ^1f^Nz|e^{(L_++3\delta )N},zJ$$

Since $`(dF_p)_p=A_p`$ there exists $`C>0`$ such that for all $`vE^s(ϵ)`$,

$$\left|vA^1Fv\right|C|v|^2.$$

Using the definition of $`L_{}`$ and increasing $`N_2`$ if necessary, one then obtains, for all $`zJ`$ and $`NN_2`$, the estimate

$`\left|A^N\chi ^1f^NzA^{(N+1)}\chi ^1f^{N+1}z\right|`$ $`A^N\left|w_NA^1Fw_N\right|^2`$
$`e^{(L_{}\delta )N}C\left|w_N\right|^2`$
$`Ce^{(2L_+L_{}+5\delta )N},`$
where $`w_N=\chi ^1f^Nz`$. Since $`2L_+<L_{}`$ by the equi-contracting hypothesis, it follows that

$$\mathrm{\Psi }:=\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}A^N\chi ^1f^N$$

exists locally uniformly in the bouquet topology. Thus $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is continuous and clearly satisfies $`d\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{id}`$ as well as the functional equation

$$\mathrm{\Psi }f\mathrm{\Psi }^1=A.$$

We claim that $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is in fact a homeomorphism. Clearly $`\mathrm{\Psi }(W_p^s)E_p^s`$ for all $`pK`$. For fixed $`p`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }|W_p^s`$, being a uniform limit of automorphisms, is holomorphic and injective. Thus $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is itself injective. This implies that $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝒲^s)`$ contains a neighborhood $`𝒩`$ of the zero section of $`E^s`$. We now use the contracting property of $`A`$ to show surjectivity of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Consider any $`vE_p^s`$ and pick $`N`$ large enough so that $`A^Nv𝒩`$, i.e. there exists $`yW_{f^Np}^s`$ with $`\mathrm{\Psi }(y)=A^Nv`$. Let $`x:=f^Ny`$. Then

$$v=A^N\mathrm{\Psi }(y)=\mathrm{\Psi }(f^Ny)=\mathrm{\Psi }(x).$$

Thus $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is a homeomorphism, which completes the proof.∎

## 3. Lyapunov data and stable manifolds

In this section, we give an overview, containing no proofs, of various results in smooth ergodic theory. There are several references which the reader can consult for details. We have taken most of our statements from \[PS\], but a more detailed proof of some of the theorems can be found in \[M\].

First, to an automorphism $`f`$ one can associate its Lyapunov data: these are vector spaces $`E_p^\lambda TM_p`$, called the *Lyapunov spaces* of $`f`$, defined by

$$E_p^\lambda :=\left\{vTM_p\right|\underset{N\pm \mathrm{}}{lim}N^1\mathrm{log}\left|df^Nv\right|=\lambda \}.$$

The numbers $`\lambda =\lambda (p)`$ such that $`E_p^\lambda \{0\}`$ are called the *Lyapunov exponents*.

In general, of course, there are only a finite number of Lyapunov exponents at a given point $`p`$. A point $`p`$ with bounded orbit such that

$$TM_p=\underset{\lambda 𝐑}{}E_p^\lambda ,$$
(3.1)
is called an *Oseledec point* (or regular point) of $`f`$. The splitting (3.1) is called the *Lyapunov splitting*. We denote the set of Oseledec points by $`𝒦(f)`$.

Before stating the basic result on Oseledec points, we need the following definitions.

###### Definition 3.1.

Let $`XM`$ be an $`f`$-invariant Borel set.

1. A Borel function $`R:X(0,\mathrm{})`$ is called $`ϵ`$-slowly varying if $`e^ϵR(fp)/R(p)e^ϵ`$ for every $`pX`$.
2. A collection of Borel functions $`\{R_ϵ:X(0,\mathrm{});ϵ>0\}`$ is called a slow variation if $`R_ϵ`$ is $`ϵ`$-slowly varying for every $`ϵ>0`$.
3. A function $`h:X(0,\mathrm{})`$ is called slowly varying if there exists a slow variation $`R_ϵ`$ such that either $`hR_ϵ`$ or $`h1/R_ϵ`$ for all $`ϵ>0`$.

Remark. In what follows, we shall have to control either the growth or shrinking of certain functions along orbits of $`f`$. To distinguish these two situations, we establish the following convention: in the former case, the functions shall have ranges of the form $`(a,\mathrm{})`$ with $`a1`$, and in the latter, ranges of the form $`(0,b)`$ with $`b<\mathrm{}`$.

###### Theorem 3.2 (\[O\]).

The set $`𝒦(f)`$ is an invariant Borel set of total measure. Moreover, there is a slow variation $`\{R_ϵ:𝒦(f)(1,\mathrm{})\}`$ such that for all $`p𝒦(f)`$ and all $`ϵ>0`$,

* $$R_ϵ(p)^1e^{ϵN}\frac{|d(f^N)_pv|}{e^{\lambda N}|v|}R_ϵ(p)e^{ϵN}\text{whenever}vE_p^\lambda $$
(3.2)
* $$\mathrm{}(E_p^\lambda ,E_p^\lambda ^{})\frac{1}{R_ϵ(p)}whenever\lambda ^{}\lambda .$$

At every Oseledec point, one has the following decomposition.

$$TM_p=E_p^sE_p^0E_p^u,$$

where

$$E_p^s=\underset{\lambda <0}{}E_p^\lambda \mathrm{and}E_p^u=\underset{\lambda >0}{}E_p^\lambda .$$

Given such a $`p`$ we define the *stable manifold at $`p`$* by

$$W_p^s:=\left\{xM\right|\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim\; sup}\frac{1}{N}\mathrm{log}\mathrm{dist}(f^Nx,f^Np)<0\}.$$

The Pesin stable manifold theorem can thus be stated as follows.

###### Theorem 3.3 (\[P\]).

For every $`p𝒦(f)`$, $`W_p^s`$ is an immersed (complex) submanifold of $`M`$.

In fact, Pesin’s result also tells us how the stable manifolds $`W_p^s`$ depend on the base point $`p`$. In particular we have a non-uniform version of the exponential map in Proposition 1.1.

###### Theorem 3.4 (\[P\]).

The stable lamination $`𝒲^s`$ defined by (0.1) is a slowly varying lamination on $`𝒦(f)`$ in the following sense: let $`M𝐑^n`$ be an isometric immersion into Euclidean space. Then there is a slowly varying function $`r:𝒦(f)(0,1)`$ with the property that if $`D_p`$ is the ball of radius $`r(p)`$ and center $`0_p`$ in $`E_p^s`$, then the orthogonal projection $`\mathrm{\Pi }:W_p^sE_p^s`$ is invertible on the branch of $`\mathrm{\Pi }^1(D_p)`$ containing $`p`$. Moreover, there exists a map $`\chi :E^s(r)𝒲^s`$ which maps $`E_p^s(r(p))`$ biholomorphically into $`W_p^s`$, maps $`0_p`$ to $`p`$, and satisfies $`d\chi _{0_p}=\mathrm{id}_{E_p^s}`$. Moreover, $`pd\chi _p|E^s(r(p))`$ is a slowly varying function on $`𝒦(f)`$.

###### Remark.

This *lamination* aspect of Pesin’s theorem is rarely stated, but it is easily seen to be true if one follows the proof, say in \[PS\], based on the graph transform.

The set $`𝒦(f)`$ can be further decomposed into invariant subsets as follows. For $`l𝐍_+`$, $`\underset{¯}{\lambda }=(\lambda _1,\mathrm{},\lambda _l)`$ with $`\lambda _l<\mathrm{}<\lambda _1<0`$ and $`\underset{¯}{m}=(m_1,\mathrm{},m_l)`$, let

$$𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m}):=\{p𝒦(f)|E_p^s=E_p^{\lambda _1}\mathrm{}E_p^{\lambda _l}\mathrm{and}\mathrm{dim}(E_p^{\lambda _j})=m_j1jl.\}.$$

Then

$$𝒦(f)=\underset{\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m}}{}𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m}),$$

and each $`𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m})`$ is a Borel set which is invariant for $`f`$. These subset of “constant stable Lyapunov data” will be crucial to our further analysis.

## 4. Slowly varying bundles and maps

In this section we establish definitions and basic results about slowly varying objects. The slowly varying notion of regularity is the strongest form of regularity that can be expected to hold in the non-uniform picture. Roughly speaking, slowly varying objects can be treated as constants, as long as we are interested in exponential estimates.

### Measurable bundles and maps

Recall that the relative $`k`$-Grassmannian of $`TM`$ is a bundle $`𝒢_k(TM)M`$ whose fiber over $`pM`$ is the set of $`k`$ dimensional complex subspaces of $`TM_p`$. A *measurable complex vector bundle* over a Borel subset $`XM`$ is then a measurable section $`E`$ of the Grassmann bundle $`𝒢_k(TM)`$ over $`X`$. A measurable subbundle $`E^{}`$ of a measurable complex vector bundle $`E`$ is a measurable complex vector bundle such that $`E_p^{}`$ is a subspace of $`E_p`$ for each $`pX`$. We implicitly assume that the base $`X`$ is invariant for $`f`$, and endow all such vector bundles with the metric inherited from $`TM`$. The total spaces are given the discrete topology discussed in the introduction.

As a matter of notation, given a function $`g:X(0,\mathrm{})`$, let

$$E(g):=\underset{pX}{}E_p(g(p)),$$

where $`E_p(r)=\{vE_p||v|<r\}.`$ Notice that this is a neighborhood of the zero section $`O_E`$ of $`E`$ and we call such a neighborhood a *tube*. Later on we will work with slowly varying tubes, i.e. tubes defined by slowly varying functions $`g`$.

Let $`EX`$ and $`E^{}X`$ be two measurable vector bundles. A (measurable) bundle map $`\mathrm{\Phi }:EE^{}`$ *fibered over $`\varphi :XX`$* is then a map of the total spaces, defined in some tube $`E(g)`$, such that $`\varphi `$ is measurable (with respect to the Borel $`\sigma `$-algebra inhereted from $`M`$) and $`\mathrm{\Phi }(E_p)E_{\varphi (p)}^{}`$ for $`pX`$. We shall require that $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ map the zero section of $`E`$ to the zero section of $`E^{}`$, and that the map $`\mathrm{\Phi }_p:=\mathrm{\Phi }|E_p^{}`$ be holomorphic for each $`pX`$. This situation is sometimes denoted by the shorthand $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\varphi `$. In our setting, it will always be the case that $`\varphi =f`$ or $`\varphi =\mathrm{id}`$.

A bundle map $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\varphi `$ is said to be *homogeneous of degree $`m`$* if for every $`c𝐂`$ one has $`\mathrm{\Phi }(cv)=c^m\mathrm{\Phi }(v).`$ We use the notation

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_p:=\underset{vE_p}{\mathrm{max}}\frac{|\mathrm{\Phi }_p(v)|}{|v|^m},$$
(4.1)
and the notation $`\mathrm{\Phi }:p\mathrm{\Phi }_p`$.

More generally, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is said to be *polynomial of degree $`m`$* if there exist homogeneous maps $`\mathrm{\Phi }_j`$ of degree $`j`$, $`1jm`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Phi }=_{j=1}^m\mathrm{\Phi }_j`$. By our requirement that the fiber maps be holomorphic, every bundle map $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\varphi `$ has a homogeneous expansion

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\underset{m=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\mathrm{\Phi }_m$$
(4.2)
Using the notation in (4.1) we have $`B(p):=sup_m\mathrm{\Phi }_{m,p}^{1/m}<\mathrm{}`$ for every $`pX`$. In general one can say very little about the dependence of $`B(p)`$ on $`p`$, but the maps we will work with have more regularity: we say that $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is *slowly varying* if $`B`$ is slowly varying in the sense of Definition 3.1.

It trivially follows that if $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is slowly varying, then so are all of its homogeneous parts $`\mathrm{\Phi }_m`$. Also, sums, compositions and inverses of slowly varying maps are easily seen to be slowly varying.

### Tubes associated to slowly varying maps

Consider a slowly varying selfmap $`T/\mathrm{id}`$ of a bundle $`EX`$ such that $`dT|O_E=\mathrm{id}`$. This has the homogeneous expansion

$$T=\mathrm{id}+\underset{j=2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}T_j.$$

Then $`T_jB^j`$ for some slowly varying function $`B:X(2,\mathrm{})`$ and $`T`$ is defined on the slowly varying tube $`E(1/B)`$.

In the next two propositions, which will be crucial in the final step of the proof of Theorem 2, we will show that the range, as well as the domain of injectivity of $`T`$ contain slowly varying tubes.

###### Proposition 4.1.

Let $`T/\mathrm{id}`$ be as above. Then there exists a slowly varying function $`g:X(0,1)`$ such that

$$T(E(1/B)))E(g).$$

###### Proof.

For each $`vE(1/B)`$, one has

$$|Tv||v|\underset{j=2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(B|v|)^j=|v|\frac{B^2|v|^2}{1B|v|}=|v|\left(1\frac{B^2|v|}{1B|v|}\right).$$

Letting $`|v|1/(2B^2)<1/4B`$, we see that $`|Tv||v|/3`$. The proposition now follows (with $`g=1/3B`$) from this and the openness of the maps $`T_p`$. ∎

Of course, since $`dT_p=\mathrm{id}`$, the Inverse Function Theorem says that $`T_p`$ is invertible on a neighborhood of $`0_p`$. The next proposition shows that if $`T`$ is slowly varying then so is the size of this neighborhood.

###### Proposition 4.2.

Let $`T/\mathrm{id}`$ be as above. Then there exists a slowly varying function $`h:X(0,1)`$ such that $`T_p`$ is well-defined and injective on $`E_p(h(p))`$ for each $`pX`$.

###### Proof.

Let $`h`$ be a function to be specified shortly. It is easily shown (say, using linear coordinates on $`E_p`$) that there is a constant $`C`$, depending only on the rank of $`E`$, such that for all $`j2`$, $`pX`$, and $`x,yE_p(h(p))`$,

$$|T_j(x)T_j(y)|C(j+1)^kB(p)^jh(p)^{j1}|xy|,$$

where $`k=\mathrm{rank}(E)`$. Now

$$\left|T(x)T(y)\right|=\left|xy+\underset{j=2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}(T_j(x)T_j(y))\right||xy|\left(1\underset{j=2}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}C(j+1)^kB(Bh)^{j1}\right).$$

Thus $`h=1/(2B^3)`$ does the trick provided $`B`$ is bounded from below by a sufficiently large constant. This completes the proof. ∎

### Contracting linear maps

We say that a linear bundle map $`A/\varphi `$ of a bundle $`EX`$ is *contracting* if there exists $`\lambda <0`$ such that $`lim\; sup_N\mathrm{}\frac{1}{N}\mathrm{log}|A^Nv|\lambda `$ for every $`vE`$. If $`A`$ is slowly varying, then this implies that there is a slow variation $`R_ϵ:X(1,\mathrm{})`$ such that

$$A_p^NR_ϵ(p)e^{(\lambda +ϵ)N}pX,N1.$$
(4.3)
There is a standard way of making this contraction more uniform by changing the metric. To this end, fix $`ϵ>0`$ and set

$$v,w^{}:=\underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}e^{2(\lambda ϵ)N}A^Nv,A^Nw,v,wE$$
(4.4)
and denote the associated norm by $`||^{}`$ and operator norm by $`^{}`$. Using (4.3) it is straightforward to verify that the series (4.4) converges, and that the metric thus obtained is a Borel metric on $`E`$ with the following properties: $`A^{}e^{\lambda +ϵ}`$ and there exists an $`ϵ`$-slowly varying function $`C:X(1,\mathrm{})`$ such that

$$|v||v|^{}C(p)|v|,vE_p.$$

### Splittings and flags

Suppose that the vector bundle $`EX`$ *splits*, i.e. there exist subbundles $`E_1,\mathrm{},E_l`$ of $`E`$ such that

$$E=\underset{j=1}{\overset{l}{}}E_j.$$

We say that this splitting is *slowly varying* if the projection maps $`EE_j`$ are all slowly varying. It is possible to show that the splitting $`E=E_j`$ is slowly varying if and only if the angle functions $`\mathrm{}(E_i,E_j)`$ are slowly varying functions.

To a splitting $`E_i`$ there is an associated *flag* $`V_{}`$, i.e. a sequence $`V_0=\{0\}V_1\mathrm{}V_l=E`$ of vector subbundles defined by

$$V_j=\underset{i=1}{\overset{j}{}}E_i.$$

Since this flag comes from a splitting, it is equipped with projections $`\mathrm{pr}_j:EV_j`$. We remark that the flag $`V_{}`$ depends on the ordering of the vector spaces $`E_i`$. For our applications, the $`E_i`$ are Lyapunov spaces and the Lyapunov exponents provide a natural ordering.

### Pseudo-linear maps

Let $`EX`$ be a vector bundle with a splitting $`E=E_j`$. A homogeneous selfmap $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ of degree $`m`$ of $`E`$ can then be further decomposed as

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=\underset{j=1}{\overset{l}{}}\underset{|\alpha |=m}{}\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }$$
(4.5)
where

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }:EE_j\text{and}\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }(cv)=c^\alpha \mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }(v).$$
(4.6)
Here $`c=(c_1,\mathrm{},c_l)𝐂^l`$, $`\alpha =(\alpha _1,\mathrm{},\alpha _l)𝐍^l`$, $`c^\alpha =c_1^{\alpha _1}\mathrm{}c_l^{\alpha _l}`$ and

$$c(v_1\mathrm{}v_l)=c_1v_1\mathrm{}c_lv_l.$$

It follows easily from the definition that if $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is a slowly varying homogeneous map of $`E`$, then all of the summands $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }`$ in the decomposition (4.5) are slowly varying.

A selfmap $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ of $`E`$ is said to be a *flag map* (with respect to the flag $`V_{}`$ associated to $`E_j`$) if $`\mathrm{pr}_j\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is a map of $`V_j`$ for all $`j`$, i.e.

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(v_1\mathrm{}v_l)=\mathrm{\Phi }_1(v_1)\mathrm{\Phi }_2(v_1v_2)\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Phi }_l(v_1\mathrm{}v_l).$$

We shall say that a flag map $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is *pseudo-linear* if it is of the form

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=A+H,$$

where $`A`$ is a linear map which preserves the splitting, and $`H`$ is a polynomial flag map with no constant or linear part, such that $`\mathrm{pr}_jH=\mathrm{pr}_jH|V_{j1}`$ for $`2jl`$. In other words, $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ can be written

$$\mathrm{\Phi }(v_1\mathrm{}v_l)=Av_1(Av_2+H_2(v_1))\mathrm{}(Av_l+H_l(v_1\mathrm{}v_{l1})).$$

Notice that if $`A`$ is invertible, then so is $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$, and its inverse is a pseudo-linear flag map whose degree is bounded in terms of the degree of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$.

### Contracting pseudo-linear maps

A bundle map $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\varphi `$ of a bundle $`EX`$ is said to be contracting if its linear part $`d\mathrm{\Phi }|O_E`$ is contracting. If $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is slowly varying, then this implies that for $`vE`$ with $`|v|`$ small one has $`|\mathrm{\Phi }^Nv|0`$ as $`N\mathrm{}`$. On the other hand, if $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is linear (and contracting), then this convergence holds locally uniformly for $`vE`$. The next result, which will be a crucial ingredient in the proof of Theorem 2 shows that the same property carries over to some pseudo-linear maps $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$.

###### Proposition 4.3.

Let $`EX`$ be a measurable bundle with a slowly varying splitting $`E_i`$ and associated flag $`V_{}`$. Let $`\mathrm{\Phi }/f`$ be a slowly varying, pseudo-linear, contracting bundle map with respect to $`V_{}`$. Then $`\mathrm{\Phi }^N0`$ locally uniformly in the topology on $`E`$. More precisely, there exists $`\lambda <0`$ with the following property: if $`pX`$ and $`JE_p`$ then there exists $`C=C(J,p)>0`$ such that

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }^Nv|Ce^{\lambda N}\text{for all }vJ\text{ and }N0.$$
(4.7)
###### Proof.

The statement of the proposition does not change if we replace the metric on $`E`$ by the metric given by (4.4), so let us work with that metric. By compactness of $`J`$ it suffices to show the estimate (4.7) for large $`N`$.

Let $`\mathrm{\Phi }=A+H`$ as in the definition of pseudo-linear, and let $`\lambda <0`$ be the associated exponent of contraction. Thus we have $`Ae^\lambda `$ on $`E_{f^Np}`$ for all $`N0`$. Pick $`ϵ>0`$ so small that $`\lambda +3ϵ<0`$.

For $`N1`$ let $`\mathrm{\Phi }^N=\mathrm{\Phi }_1^N\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Phi }_l^N`$ be the decomposition of $`\mathrm{\Phi }^N:EE`$ relative to the splitting $`E=E_1\mathrm{}E_l`$. Then $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1^N=A^N`$ so $`\mathrm{\Phi }_1^Ne^{\lambda N}`$. For $`2jl`$ we have

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_j^{N+1}=A\mathrm{\Phi }_j^N+H_j(\mathrm{\Phi }_1^N\mathrm{}\mathrm{\Phi }_{j1}^N),$$
(4.8)
where the $`H_j`$’s are polynomials with no constant or linear terms. The slowly varying nature of the $`H_j`$’s implies the existence of constants $`r_0>0`$ and $`C_0>0`$ such that

$$|H_j(w)|C_0e^{ϵN}|w|^2\text{whenever }wE_{f^Np}\text{ and }|w|r_0e^{ϵN}.$$
(4.9)
We now inductively show the following estimate, which clearly implies the statement of the proposition (with $`\lambda `$ replaced by $`\lambda +ϵ`$): there exists $`N_0>0`$ such that if $`vJ`$, $`1il`$ and $`NN_0`$ then

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }_i^Nv|e^{(\lambda +ϵ)N}r_0e^{ϵN}.$$
(4.10)
This estimate clearly holds for $`i=1`$. Suppose it holds for $`1i<jl`$ and let us show that it then hold for $`i=j`$ after possibly increasing $`N_0`$. Indeed, if $`NN_0`$ then (4.8), (4.9) and (4.10) imply that

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }_j^{N+1}v|e^\lambda e^{(\lambda +ϵ)N}+C_0e^{ϵN}e^{2(\lambda +ϵ)N}e^{(\lambda +ϵ)(N+1)}$$
(4.11)
if $`N_0`$ is large enough. Thus (4.10) holds, which completes the proof. ∎

### Regular bundle maps

Consider a bundle $`EX`$ with a splitting $`E_j`$. A linear bundle map $`A:EE`$ is said to be *regular* if it preserves the splitting and if there exist $`\lambda _l<\mathrm{}<\lambda _1`$ such that

$$\underset{N\mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{1}{N}\mathrm{log}|A^Nv|=\lambda _j\text{for }vE_j$$

Now suppose, in addition, that the map $`A`$ and the splitting $`E_i`$ are slowly varying. Then one may show, using standard techniques as in \[M\], that there exists a slow variation $`R_ϵ:X(1,\mathrm{})`$ such that for all $`pX`$, all $`ϵ>0`$, and all $`N𝐙`$:

$$R_ϵ(p)^1e^{ϵN}\frac{|A_p^Nv|}{e^{\lambda _jN}|v|}R_ϵ(p)e^{ϵN}\text{whenever}vE_{j,p}$$
(4.12)
A general bundle map $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\varphi `$ is said to be regular if it is slowly varying and if the linear bundle map $`A:=dF|0_E`$ is regular. The vector $`\underset{¯}{\lambda }=(\lambda _r,\mathrm{},\lambda _1)`$ is said to be the *Lyapunov data* associated to $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$. It is easy to see that a regular bundle map is contracting if and only if its Lyapunov data satisfies $`\lambda _1<0`$.

The part of Oseledec’s Theorem that we will use can be stated as follows. There exist invariant Borel sets $`𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m})`$ in $`M`$, the union of which has total measure. Over each $`𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m})`$ there is a measurable bundle $`E^sTM`$ with a slowly varying splitting $`E^{\lambda _i}`$ such that $`A:=df|E^s`$ is a regular contracting bundle map fibered over $`f`$.

The definition of a linear bundle map being regular is asymptotic in nature. The concept of an *adapted metric* makes this information easier to work with. For $`ϵ>0`$ we define

$$v,w_ϵ^{}:=\underset{N𝐙}{}\frac{A^Nv,A^Nw}{e^{2\lambda _jN+2ϵ|N|}},v,wE_j$$
(4.13)
and $`v,w_ϵ=0`$ for $`vE_i`$, $`wE_j`$, $`ij`$. We denote the associated norm by $`||_ϵ^{}`$ and operator norm by $`_ϵ^{}`$. Often we will drop the subscript and write $`||^{}`$ instead of $`||_ϵ^{}`$.

Using (4.12) and the slow variation of the splitting $`E_j`$ it is not too hard to verify that the series (4.13) converges, and that the metric thus obtained is a Borel metric on $`E`$ with the following properties:

$$e^{\lambda _jϵ}|v|_ϵ^{}|Av|_ϵ^{}e^{\lambda _j+ϵ}|v|_ϵ^{}\text{for }vE_j,$$

and there exists a slow variation $`C_ϵ:X(1,\mathrm{})`$ such that

$$|v||v|_ϵ^{}C_ϵ(p)|v|,vE_p.$$
(4.14)
Recall that a bundle map $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\varphi `$ is slowly varying if and only if the function $`psup_m\mathrm{\Phi }_{m,p}^{1/m}`$ is slowly varying, where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_m`$ is the homogeneous expansion of $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$. Using (4.14) it is straightforward to verify that $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is slowly varying if and only if there exists a slow variation $`R_ϵ`$ such that

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{m.p}_ϵ^{}R_{2ϵ}(p)^m.$$

In this sense, working with the given metric $`||`$ or the adapted metric $`||_ϵ^{}`$ has no effect on the definition of slow variation.

## 5. Local analytic conjugation

The goal of this section is to establish the main step in the proof of Theorem 2, namely a local conjugation of regular bundle maps to a pseudo-linear model.

###### Theorem 5.1.

Let $`EX`$ be a measurable bundle over an $`f`$-invariant Borel set $`XM`$ with a slowly varying splitting $`E=E_j`$. Let $`F/f`$ be a slowly varying, contracting, and regular bundle map of $`E`$ (with respect to this splitting). Then there exists a polynomial bundle map $`P/f`$ with $`dP|0_E=dF|0_E`$ and a bundle map $`T/\mathrm{id}`$ with $`dT|0_E=\mathrm{id}`$, so that

$$TFT^1=P$$

holds on a slowly varying neighborhood of the zero section $`O_E`$ in $`E`$. Moreover, $`P`$ and $`T`$ are slowly varying, and $`P`$ is a pseudo-linear, contracting, polynomial automorphism of the flag associated to the splitting of $`E`$.

One should view $`T`$ as a conjugacy (i.e. change of coordinates) that conjugates $`F`$ to the simpler mapping $`P`$. The proof of Theorem 5.1 occupies the remainder of this section.

###### Proof of Theorem 5.1..

Write $`A=dF|O_E`$ and recall our notation $`O(m)`$. We construct a pair of sequences $`\{P_m/f\}_{m1}`$ and $`\{T_m/\mathrm{id}\}_{m1}`$ of slowly varying polynomial bundle maps such that:

* $`T_m=\mathrm{id}+O(2)`$ and $`P_m=A+O(2)`$;
* $`P_m^1T_mFT_m=O(m+1)`$;
* there exists $`m_01`$ such that $`P_m=P_{m_0}`$ for all $`mm_0`$;
* $`P:=P_{m_0}`$ is a pseudo-linear map of the flag associated to the splitting of $`E`$;
* $`T_m`$ converges to an analytic map $`T`$.

The construction is inductive, and proceeds as follows. Set $`P_1=A`$ and $`T_1=\mathrm{id}`$. Suppose that we have constructed $`T_m`$ and $`P_m`$. Let

$$T_{m+1}=T_m+H_{m+1}\text{and}P_{m+1}=P_m(\mathrm{id}+Q_{m+1}),$$

with $`H_{m+1}`$ and $`Q_{m+1}`$ to be determined. Then a simple calculation shows that

$$P_{m+1}^1T_{m+1}FT_{m+1}=P_m^1T_mFT_m(Q_{m+1}+H_{m+1}A^1H_{m+1}A)+O(m+2).$$

Thus, writing $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{m+1}:=P_m^1T_mFT_m\mathrm{mod}O(m+2)`$, we see that (b) holds for $`m+1`$ if we can find homogeneous solutions $`H_{m+1}`$ and $`Q_{m+1}`$ for the equation

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{m+1}=Q_{m+1}+H_{m+1}A^1H_{m+1}A.$$
(5.1)
The next lemma shows that solutions of (5.1) exist so that (c) and (d) hold as well.

###### Lemma 5.2.

If $`\mathrm{\Phi }/\mathrm{id}`$ is a homogeneous, slowly varying, polynomial bundle mapping of degree $`m2`$, then there exist homogeneous, slowly varying polynomial bundle mappings $`Q/\mathrm{id}`$ and $`H/\mathrm{id}`$, also of degree $`m`$, such that

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=Q+HA^1HA.$$
(5.2)
Moreover $`Q`$ can be chosen as follows. If $`m`$ is sufficiently large, then one can take $`Q=0`$. Otherwise, $`Q`$ is a pseudo-linear map of the flag associated to $`E_j`$ with no linear part, i.e. $`Q`$ has the form

$$Q(v_1\mathrm{}v_l)=0Q_2(v_1)\mathrm{}Q_l(v_1\mathrm{}v_{l1}).$$

Before proving Lemma 5.2, we need to develop a few ideas. First, the homogeneous polynomial bundle mapping $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ can be decomposed with respect to the splitting $`E_i`$ into $`(j,\alpha )`$-homogeneous parts $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }`$ as in (4.5). By linearity we only need to solve (5.2) for each summand $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }`$. Recall that if $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is slowly varying, then so are these summands.

In order to solve (5.2) we will make crucial use of the fact that $`A`$ is regular with respect to the splitting $`E_i`$. Let $`\underset{¯}{\lambda }=(\lambda _1,\mathrm{},\lambda _l)`$ be the Lyapunov data associated to $`A`$ and notice that

$$\lambda _l<\mathrm{}<\lambda _1<0$$

since $`A`$ is contracting. If $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is $`(j,\alpha )`$-homogeneous, then it follows that

$$A^N\mathrm{\Phi }A^Ne^{(\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha \lambda _j)N}\mathrm{\Phi }\text{for }|N|1.$$
(5.3)
This estimate, which is the key to the analysis in this section, will be made more precise below. Here we only note that the quantity $`\lambda _j\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha `$ plays an obvious role in (5.3) and leads to the following definition. We say that the pair $`(j,\alpha )`$ is *resonant* if

$$\lambda _j=\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha .$$

It is called *non-resonant* otherwise, and more specifically, *super-resonant* or *sub-resonant* if we have $`\lambda _j\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha <0`$ or $`\lambda _j\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha >0`$, respectively.

###### Lemma 5.3.

There exists $`m_0𝐍`$ such that all pairs $`(j,\alpha )`$ with $`|\alpha |>m_0`$ are sub-resonant. Furthermore, if $`(j,\alpha )`$ is resonant then $`\alpha _j=\alpha _{j+1}=\mathrm{}=\alpha _l=0`$.

###### Proof.

For the first statement pick $`m_0\lambda _l/\lambda _1`$. The second statement is easily verified. ∎

For the rest of this section we work with a fixed but small $`ϵ>0`$. Specifically we require that

$$sup\{\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha \lambda _j+(|\alpha |+2)ϵ\}<0,$$
(5.4)
where the supremum is taken over all sub-resonant pairs $`(j,\alpha )`$ (it is easy to check that this is possible), and

$$\mathrm{min}\{\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha \lambda _j(|\alpha |+2)ϵ\}>0$$
(5.5)
where the minimum is taken over all sub-resonant pairs $`(j,\alpha )`$; the latter form a finite set by Lemma 5.3.

###### Lemma 5.4.

With notation as in Lemma 5.2, if $`(j,\alpha )`$ is non-resonant and $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ is $`(j,\alpha )`$-homogeneous, then one can find a slowly varying $`H/\mathrm{id}`$ so that

$$\mathrm{\Phi }=HA^1HA.$$

Further, there exists a constant $`C`$, depending only on on the Lyapunov data $`\underset{¯}{\lambda }`$, such that

$$H^{}C\mathrm{\Phi }^{},$$
(5.6)
where $`^{}=_ϵ^{}`$ is the operator norm associated to the adapted metric (4.13).

###### Proof.

The operator $`\mathrm{\Psi }\mathrm{\Psi }A^1\mathrm{\Psi }A`$ has the following two formal inverses:

$$\mathrm{\Psi }𝒢^+(\mathrm{\Psi }):=\underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}A^N\mathrm{\Psi }A^N\text{and}\mathrm{\Psi }𝒢^{}(\mathrm{\Psi }):=\underset{N=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}A^N\mathrm{\Psi }A^N.$$
(5.7)
We proceed in two cases.

* Sub-resonant case: let $`H=𝒢^+(\mathrm{\Phi })`$.
* Super-resonant case: let $`H=𝒢^{}(\mathrm{\Phi })`$.

We have to show that this makes sense. Let us consider the sub-resonant case (i). We have

$`𝒢^+\mathrm{\Phi }^{}`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}A^N\mathrm{\Phi }A^N^{}`$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{N=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}e^{(\underset{¯}{\lambda }\alpha \lambda _j+(|\alpha |+2)ϵ)N}\mathrm{\Phi }^{}`$
$`=:C\mathrm{\Phi }^{}.`$
It follows from (5.4) that $`C<\mathrm{}`$ and that $`C`$ does not depend on $`j`$, $`\alpha `$ or $`ϵ`$. Thus (5.6) holds, and this implies that $`H`$ is slowly varying. Notice that the construction of $`H`$ does not depend on the choice of $`ϵ`$. The super-resonant case is treated similarly, using (5.5). This completes the proof. ∎

###### Proof of Lemma 5.2..

Simply decompose $`\mathrm{\Phi }`$ as a sum of resonant, sub-resonant and super-resonant $`(j,\alpha )`$-homogeneous polynomial bundle mappings $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }`$. For the non-resonant terms we get $`H_{j,\alpha }`$ from Lemma 5.4 and set $`Q_{j,\alpha }=0`$. For the resonant terms we set $`H_{j,\alpha }=0`$ and $`Q_{j,\alpha }=\mathrm{\Phi }_{j,\alpha }`$. Then set $`H=H_{j,\alpha }`$ and $`Q=Q_{j,\alpha }`$. From Lemma 5.4 we get that $`H`$ and $`Q`$ are slowly varying. The remaining statements follow from Lemma 5.3. ∎

Returning to the proof of Theorem 5.1 we have constructed our sequences of maps $`P_m`$ and $`T_m`$, and have shown that they satisfy (a)–(d) above. It remains to show that $`T=limT_m`$ is analytic and slowly varying. For this it suffices to show that $`H_m^{}B^{h(m)}`$ for some $`ϵ`$-slowly varying $`B:X(1,\mathrm{})`$ and some concave function $`h:𝐍𝐑_+`$.

Recall that the degree of the inverse of a pseudo-linear map is bounded in terms of the degree of the map itself. In particular, the degree $`\nu `$ of $`P^1`$ is finite, so we may write

$$P^1=SA^1=(S_1+S_2+\mathrm{}+S_\nu )A^1,$$

where $`S_1=\mathrm{id}`$ and $`S_j`$ is homogeneous of degree $`j`$, and all the maps are slowly varying. Finally, write $`F=AG`$, so that $`G/\mathrm{id}`$ is analytic and slowly varying. We denote the homogeneous expansion of $`G`$ by

$$G=\underset{j=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}G_j,$$

observing that $`G_1=\mathrm{id}`$.

Keeping $`ϵ`$ fixed we now pick an $`ϵ`$-slowly varying $`B:X(2,\mathrm{})`$ with the following properties:

$`S_i^{}`$ $`B^\alpha \text{for }2i\nu `$ (5.8)
$`H_m^{}`$ $`B^\alpha \text{for }2mm_1`$ (5.9)
$`G_k^{}`$ $`B^{k\alpha }\text{for }k2`$ (5.10)
$`A^1^{}`$ $`B^\alpha \text{and}A^{}1.`$ (5.11)
Here $`\alpha (0,1)`$ and $`m_1>m_0`$ will be chosen later. As before we write $`^{}=_ϵ^{}`$. That (5.8)–(5.11) are possible follows from the fact that each $`S_i`$ and each $`H_m`$ are slowly varying, as are $`G`$ and $`A^1`$, while $`A`$ is contracting. We claim that if $`\alpha `$ is small enough and $`m_1`$ is large enough, then

$$H_m^{}B^{m\sqrt{m}}\text{for all }m2.$$
(5.12)
This is clearly true for $`mm_1`$ by our choice of $`B`$. Suppose that (5.12) holds for some $`m`$. To establish it for $`m+1`$ it suffices, in view of Lemma 5.4, to prove that

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{m+1}^{}C^1B^{m+1\sqrt{m+1}},$$

where $`\mathrm{\Phi }_{m+1}`$ is given by (5.1). To this end, let us take a look at the quantity $`P^1T_mFT_m`$, keeping in mind that we are only interested in the terms of degree $`m+1`$. Thus the terms coming from $`T_m`$ automatically disappear, and we have

$`\mathrm{\Phi }_{m+1}`$ $`=P^1T_mFT_m\mathrm{mod}O(m+2)`$
$`={\displaystyle S_iA^1H_jAG_k},`$ (5.13)
where the sum is over all $`i,j`$ and $`k`$ such that $`ijk=m+1`$, $`k1`$, $`1j(m+1)/2`$ and $`1i\nu `$. (The constraint on the index $`j`$ comes from the fact that (i) $`1jm`$, and (ii) we need only consider the terms of degree $`m+1`$.)

The sum (5.13) consists of considerably fewer than $`\nu m^2`$ terms. We now estimate $`S_iA^1H_jAG_k`$ in all possible cases, using (5.8)-(5.12) and the induction hypothesis, and assuming that $`\alpha `$ is small while $`m_1`$ is large.

* ($`k2,i2`$): then $`ij(m+1)/2`$ and

$$S_iA^1H_jAG_k^{}B^{\alpha +i(\alpha +(j\sqrt{j})+jk\alpha )}B^{(m+1)(\frac{1}{2}+3\alpha )}\frac{1}{C\nu m^2}B^{m+1\sqrt{m+1}}.$$
* ($`k2,i=1`$): then $`j(m+1)/2`$ and

$$A^1H_jAG_k^{}B^{\alpha +(j\sqrt{j})+jk\alpha }B^{(m+1)(\frac{1}{2}+2\alpha )}\frac{1}{C\nu m^2}B^{m+1\sqrt{m+1}}.$$
* ($`k=1`$): then $`i2`$ and $`ij=(m+1)`$. Further, a straightforward calculation readily shows that $`\sqrt{m+1}(\sqrt{i}1)\alpha (1+i)\alpha \sqrt{m+1}`$, so

$`S_iA^1H_jA^{}B^{\alpha +i(\alpha +(j\sqrt{j}))}`$ $`=B^{(m+1\sqrt{m+1})+(1+i)\alpha \sqrt{m+1}(\sqrt{i}1)}`$
$`B^{(m+1\sqrt{m+1})\alpha \sqrt{m+1}}`$
$`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{C\nu m^2}}B^{m+1\sqrt{m+1}}.`$

Putting all this together, we have:

$$\mathrm{\Phi }_{m+1}^{}\underset{i,j,k}{}S_iA^1H_jAG_k^{}<\nu m^2\frac{1}{C\nu m^2}B^{m+1\sqrt{m+1}}=\frac{1}{C}B^{m+1\sqrt{m+1}}.$$

Thus the induction step is complete and (5.12) holds for all $`m2`$. Theorem 5.1 now follows from the definition of a slowly varying bundle map. ∎

## 6. Proof of Theorem 2

We may replace $`𝒦(f)`$ by the Borel set $`𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m})`$. Let us apply Theorem 5.1 to the bundle $`E^s𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m})`$ (with its Lyapunov splitting) and the bundle map $`F=\chi ^1f\chi `$ of $`E^s`$, where $`\chi `$ is the exponential map given by Theorem 3.4. By Theorem 3.2 and Theorem 3.4 the map $`F`$ is slowly varying, contracting and regular (with respect to the Lyapunov splitting). Thus we may apply Theorem 5.1 to $`F`$.

With $`P`$ and $`T`$ as in Theorem 5.1 let

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_N:=P^NT\chi ^1f^N.$$

Then for each $`p𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m})`$ and each compact subset $`JW_p^s`$ there exists an integer $`N_0=N_0(J)`$ such that $`\mathrm{\Psi }_N`$ is well defined on $`J`$ whenever $`NN_J`$. Indeed, since $`f^N`$ decays exponentially as $`N\mathrm{}`$, and $`T\chi ^1`$ is slowly varying, $`f^N`$ will carry $`J`$ into the (slowly varying) domain of $`T\chi ^1`$, provided $`N`$ is large enough. Then one has

$$\mathrm{\Psi }_{N+1}\mathrm{\Psi }_N=P^N(P^1TFT)\chi ^1f^N=0.$$

It follows that, locally uniformly in the discrete topology on $`𝒲^s`$, $`\mathrm{\Psi }_N`$ converges as $`N\mathrm{}`$ to a map $`\mathrm{\Psi }:𝒲^sE^s`$. Evidently $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is holomorphic on the fibers $`W_p^s`$ of $`𝒲^s`$, maps $`W_p^s`$ into $`E_p^s`$, and satisfies the functional equation

$$P^1\mathrm{\Psi }f=\mathrm{\Psi }.$$

It remains only to show that $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is bijective, which it obviously suffices to check on fibers. Thus we fix from here on a point $`p𝒦(\underset{¯}{\lambda },\underset{¯}{m})`$.

First note that, by Proposition 4.2, there exists a slowly varying function $`h`$ such that $`T\chi ^1|E^s(h)`$ (and thus $`P^NT\chi ^1|E^s(h)`$) is injective on fibers. If $`x_1,x_2W_p^s`$ are two points, then for large enough $`N`$, $`f^Nx_jE^s(h)`$ for $`j=1,2`$. (Again, this is so because $`f^N`$ decays exponentially, and thus $`f^Nx_j`$ eventually enters and remains inside the slowly varying tube $`E^s(h)`$.) But then, if $`N`$ is large enough,

$$\mathrm{\Psi }x_1=\mathrm{\Psi }x_2P^NT\chi ^1(f^Nx_1)=P^NT\chi ^1(f^Nx_2)f^Nx_1=f^Nx_2x_1=x_2.$$

Thus $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is injective.

Next, fix $`vE_p^s`$. We want to find $`xW_p^s`$ with $`\mathrm{\Psi }(x)=v`$. By Proposition 4.1, there exists a slowly varying tube $`E^s(g)`$ in the range of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$. Further, by Proposition 4.3, $`|P^Nv|`$ decays exponentially, so $`P^N(v)`$ enters and remains inside $`E^s(g)`$ for large enough $`N`$. Let $`yW_{f^Np}^s`$ be such that $`\mathrm{\Psi }(y)=P^N(v)`$ and set $`x=f^Ny`$. Then

$$\mathrm{\Psi }(x)=\mathrm{\Psi }(f^Ny)=P^N\mathrm{\Psi }(y)=v,$$

and thus $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ is surjective.

Finally, from the fact that $`(dP_p)_p=A=df_p|E^s`$ and that $`(d\chi _p)_p=\mathrm{id}`$, we see from the definition of $`\mathrm{\Psi }=\mathrm{\Psi }_N`$ that $`(d\mathrm{\Psi }_p)_p=\mathrm{id}`$. This completes the proof of Theorem 2.∎

### Final remarks

The proof of the existence of the normal form in the stationary case as presented in \[St, RR\] does not use the convergence of the formal solution $`T`$ of the local conjugation problem. Instead, one shows the existence of a sufficiently large integer $`m`$ such that $`P^NT_mF^N`$ converges. This relies heavily on the fact that the iterates of a pseudo-linear map grow at most exponentially (see Lemma 1 in the Appendix of \[RR\]). This exponential growth seems quite hard to establish in the slowly varying setting—it would be interesting to know whether it is indeed possible. On the other hand, our method also provides a new proof in the analytic stationary case.


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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

There is still no fundamental physical theory of the very early universe which addresses issues that arise from the regime of transplanckian physics. One of these issues relates to the origin of the cosmological perturbation spectrum. In an expanding Universe, the physical momentum gets blue-shifted back in time, therefore the observed low values of the momentum today that contribute to the CMBR spectrum may have originated from values larger than the Planck mass $`M_P`$ in the Early Universe. This is similar to the problems that arise in trying to explain the origin of Hawking radiation in Black Hole physics. In a series of papers , it was demonstrated that the Hawking radiation remains unaffected by modifications of the ultra high energy regime, expressed through the modification of the usual linear dispersion relation at energies larger than a certain ultraviolet scale $`k_C`$. Following a similar procedure, in the case of an expanding Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) spacetime, Martin and Brandenberger in Ref.  (see also ) showed that standard predictions of inflation are indeed sensitive to trans-planckian physics: different dispersion relations lead to different results for the CMBR spectrum.

It is the lack of a fundamental theory, valid at all energies, that makes the model building of the transplanckian regime very interesting. The main issue is how much are the known observables affected by the unknown theory. The apparently ad hoc modification of the dispersion relation at high energies is contrained by the criterion that its low energy predictions do no conflict the observables. Specifically, in this paper we address two questions: a) can the transplanckian regime contribute to the dark energy of the universe, and b) how sensitive is the CMBR spectrum to energies higher than the Planck scale $`M_P`$, where our current physics theory is known to break down.

We choose a family of dispersion relations for the frequency of the wavefunctions that modifies the behaviour of the field at the ultrahigh energies of the transplanckian regime. The dispersion relation has the following features: it is smooth, nearly linear for energies less than the Planck scale, reaches a maximum, and attenuates to zero at ultrahigh momenta thereby producing ultralow frequencies at very short distances. We name the $`tail`$ that part of the dispersion graph of very short distances that contains the range of ultralow frequencies less or equal to the current Hubble constant $`H_0`$. It follows that the $`tail`$ modes are still currently frozen. We calculate the energy of the $`tail`$ modes in order to address the former question (a) and show that although the $`tail`$ does not contribute significantly to the CMBR spectrum, it has a dominant contribution to the dark energy of the universe . The energy density of the $`tail`$ modes is of the same order today as the matter energy density.

The second question (b) is motivated by the problem that in most inflationary models the present large scale structure of the Universe is extrapolated from a regime of ultra-high energies (known as the transplanckian regime) originating from before the last 60 e-foldings of the exponential expansion. In Refs.  the authors have demonstrated that the problem of calculating the spectrum of perturbations with a time-dependent dispersive frequency can be reduced to the familiar topic of particle creation on a time-dependent background . We will use their observation in what follows. They also conjecture that the observed power spectrum can always be recovered only by using a smooth dispersion relation, which ensures an adiabatic time-evolution of the modes. By taking the frequency dispersion relations to be the general class of Epstein functions , we check and lend strong support to their conjecture. We present the exact solutions to the mode equation for the scalar field111These functions are known for having exact solutions to second order differential equations in terms of hypergeometric functions. with a “time-dependent mass”, and the resulting CMBR spectrum below. We show that the major contribution to the CMBR spectrum comes from the long wavelength modes when they re-enter the horizon. The spectrum is nearly insensitive to the very short wavelength modes inside the Hubble horizon.

The paper is organized as follows: in Section 2, we present the set-up and formalism of our analysis. The family of dispersion functions, exact solutions to the mode equations of motion and the resulting CMBR spectrum (from the Bogoliubov method) are reported in Section 3. In Section 4, we calculate the contribution of the tail modes to the dark energy of the universe today. In this work, we have neglected the backreaction effects of particle production. This assumption is fully justified from the calculation of the energy for the transplanckian modes, in Section 4. Due to the dispersed ultralow frequency of these modes, the energy contained in that transplanckian regime is very small ($`10^{122}\rho _{total}`$), thus the backreaction effect is reasonably negligible . We present our conclusions in Section 5.

## 2 The Set-Up and Formalism

Let us start with the generalized Friedmann-Lemaitre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) line-element which, in the presence of scalar and tensor perturbations, takes the form

$`ds^2`$ $`=`$ $`a^2(\eta )\{d\eta ^2+[\delta _{ij}+h(\eta ,𝐧)Q\delta _{ij}`$ (1)
$`+h_l(\eta ,𝐧){\displaystyle \frac{Q_{ij}}{n^2}}+h_{gw}(\eta ,𝐧)Q_{ij}]dx^idx^j\},`$
where $`\eta `$ is the conformal time and $`a(\eta )`$ the scale factor. The dimensionless quantity $`𝐧`$ is the comoving wavevector, related to the physical vector $`𝐤`$ by $`𝐤=𝐧/a(\eta )`$ as usual. The functions $`h`$ and $`h_l`$ represent the scalar sector of perturbations while $`h_{gw}`$ represents the gravitational waves. $`Q(x^i)`$ and $`Q_{ij}(x^i)`$ are the eigenfunction and eigentensor, respectively, of the Laplace operator on the flat spacelike hypersurfaces. For simplicity, we will take a scale factor $`a(\eta )`$ given by a power law222It has been argued in  that the analysis extends to other laws for the scale factor., $`a(\eta )=|\eta _c/\eta |^\beta `$, where $`\beta 1`$ and $`|\eta _c|=\beta /H(\eta _c)`$. The initial power spectrum of the perturbations can be computed once we solve the time-dependent equations in the scalar and tensor sector. The mode equations for both sectors reduce  to a Klein-Gordon equation of the form

$$\mu _n^{\prime \prime }+\left[n^2\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}\right]\mu _n=0,$$
(2)
where the prime denotes derivative with respect to conformal time. Therefore, studying perturbations in a FLRW background is equivalent to solving the mode equations for a scalar field $`\mu `$ related (through Bardeen variables ) to the perturbation field in the expanding background. The above equation represents a linear dispersion relation for the frequency $`\omega `$,

$$\omega ^2=k^2=\frac{n^2}{a^2}.$$
(3)
The dispersion relation of Eq. (3) holds for values of momentum smaller than the Planck scale. There is no reason to believe that it remains linear at ultra-high energies larger than $`M_P`$. Yet, nonlinear dispersion relations are quite likely to occur from the Lagrangian of some effective theory obtained by the yet unknown fundamental theory. Nonlinear dispersion relations, similar to the ones we consider in this work, are known to arise in effective theories of: nonlocal condensed matter or particle physics models arising from non-canonical kinetic terms ; from the dissipative behavior of a quantum system immersed into an environment after coarse-graining ; or from effective theories with phase transitions, time-dependent mass squared terms or effective potentials . Perhaps, trans-planckian models motivated by superstring theory  or a two-stage inflationary model  are plausible. In the latter case, one could easily envision for example a scenario with the first stage of inflation occurring at energy scales above the Planck mass 333There is no reason why inflation must only occur below Planck energies. In principle, inflation at ultra high energies is equally possible. followed by a nonthermal phase transition . The preheating  from the nonthermal phase transition then leads to the second stage of inflation below Planck energies. In the former case, the motivation comes from the common belief that the superstring theory is the one that describes or at least is valid at energies of the transplanckian period. Taking this idea one step further, we incorporate the concept of superstring duality (which applies at transplanckian regimes) in our analysis by choosing a particular family of dispersion relations that exhibits dual behavior444For example, when compactifying superstring theory in a torus topology, of large radius $`R`$ and winding radius $`r`$, the frequency mode spectrum is dual in the sense that $`R`$ and $`r`$ are related as $`r=1/R`$. This means that each normal mode with a frequency $`n/R`$, where $`n`$ is an integer, has its dual winding mode with decreasing energy that goes like $`1/r=R`$ ., i.e. appearance of ultra-low mode frequencies both at low and high momenta555We would like to thank A. Riotto for pointing this out to us. $`k`$.

Despite the above comments and possible approaches, we should stress that any modeling of Planck scale physics by analogy with the already familiar systems is pure speculation. We lack the fundamental theory that may naturally motivate or reproduce such dispersion behaviour. Nevertheless, it would be instructive to derive these dispersion relations from particle physics and string theory, as a step towards understanding the physical nature of the model.

In what follows, we replace the linear relation $`\omega ^2(k)=k^2=n^2/a(\eta )^2`$ with a nonlinear dispersion relation $`\omega (k)=F(k)`$. The family of dispersion functions $`F(k)`$ for our model is introduced in section 3. These functions have the following features: they are linear for low momenta up to the Plank scale $`k_C=M_P`$, taken to be the cuttoff scale, but beyond the cutoff they smoothly turn down and asymptotically approach zero whereby producing ultra-low frequencies at very short distances. Therefore, in Eq. (2), $`n^2`$ should be replaced by:

$$n_{eff}^2=a(\eta )^2F(k)^2=a(\eta )^2F[n/a(\eta )]^2.$$
(4)
We will also consider the general case of non-minimal or conformal coupling to gravity by keeping some arbitrary, unspecified, coupling constant $`\xi `$. Then, the equation for the scalar and tensor perturbations, that we need to solve, takes the form

$$\mu _n^{\prime \prime }+\left[n_{eff}^2(16\xi )\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}\right]\mu _n=0.$$
(5)
For future reference, we define the generalised comoving frequency as

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_n^2=n_{eff}^2(16\xi )\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}.$$
(6)
The dynamics of the scale factor is determined by the evolution of the background inflaton field $`\varphi `$, with potential $`V(\varphi )`$, and the Friedmann equation. In conformal time, these equations are:

$`{\displaystyle \frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}}{\displaystyle \frac{a^^2}{a^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{8\pi G}{3}}\left(\varphi ^^2a^2V(\varphi )\right)`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (7)
$`\varphi ^{\prime \prime }+2{\displaystyle \frac{a^{}}{a}}\varphi ^{}+a^2{\displaystyle \frac{V(\varphi )}{\varphi }}`$ $`=`$ $`0.`$ (8)
Most of the contribution in the perturbation spectrum comes from long-wavelength modes, since at late times they are non relativistic and act like a classical homogeneous field with an amplitude $`\overline{\mu }`$ given by:

$$\overline{\mu }=\sqrt{\mu ^2}=\left(\frac{1}{2\pi a^3}𝑑nn^2|\mu _n|^2\right)^{1/2}.$$
(9)
These are produced at early stages of inflation, thus they are very sensitive to the initial conditions. The correct vacuum state666In  the authors argue that there are two vacuum states. The argument extends to the criteria for choosing the right vacuum out of the two. Here we show there is only one true vacuum state which reduces to the Minkowski vacuum only at a certain limit. is given by the solution to Eq. (5) as clarified below. But if the stage of inflation is very long, and the Hubble parameter $`H`$ is not changing considerably, then a Minkowski-like vacuum is a good first order approximation for the initial vacuum state ($`\eta \mathrm{}`$), with:

$$\mu _n(\eta )\frac{1}{\sqrt{2n}}e^{in\eta }.$$
(10)
However, if $`H`$ was greater at the early stages of inflation, before the last 60 e-foldings, and/or the inflationary stage is short, then one must solve the wave equation and find the solution that minimizes the energy . This is the correct vacuum state of the system. Otherwise, if one a priori chooses the Minkowski vacuum to be the initial vacuum state describing the system, the resulting value of $`\mu ^2`$ is considerably underestimated as shown rigorously by Felder et al. .

As already shown in Ref. , Eq. (5) represents particle production in a time-dependent background. We will follow the method of Bogoliubov transformation to determine the spectrum. The correct initial condition for the vacuum state is the solution to the equation that minimizes the energy. Hence, if the ’time-dependent’ background goes asymptotically flat at late times, then in that limit the wavefunction should behave as a plane wave:

$$\mu _n_\eta \mathrm{}\frac{1}{\sqrt{\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{in}}}e^{i\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{in}\eta }.$$
(11)
As it is well known on this scenario, in general at late times one has a squeezed state due to the curved background that mixes positive and negative frequencies. The evolution of the mode function $`\mu _n`$ at late times fixes the Bogoliubov coefficients $`\alpha _n`$ and $`\beta _n`$,

$$\mu _n_{\eta +\mathrm{}}\frac{\alpha _n}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}}}e^{i\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}\eta }+\frac{\beta _n}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}}}e^{+i\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}\eta }.$$
(12)
with the normalization condition:

$$|\alpha _n|^2|\beta _n|^2=1.$$
(13)
In the above expressions, $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{in}`$ and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}`$ denote the asymptotic values of $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n`$ when $`\eta \mathrm{}`$. The spectrum of particles per mode is then calculated with the conventional Bogoliubov method . The number of particles created $`n`$ and their energy density $`\rho `$ are calculated by the following expressions

$`n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2a^3}}{\displaystyle 𝑑nn^2|\beta _n|^2},`$ (14)
$`\rho `$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2a^4}}{\displaystyle n𝑑nn_{eff}𝑑n_{eff}|\beta _n|^2}`$ (15)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2\pi ^2}}{\displaystyle k𝑑k\omega (k)𝑑\omega |\beta _k|^2}.`$
If the resulting Bogoliubov coefficient $`\beta _k`$ of the particles produced has a (nearly) thermal distribution, we can conclude that the CMBR in our problem is that of a (nearly) black body spectrum. We introduce the class of Epstein functions as the family of dispersion relations in Section 3, and derive the CMBR spectrum from the exact solutions to the evolution equations.

Meanwhile, for the special features of our choice of dispersion relation, the modes at very high momenta but of ultra low frequencies $`\omega (k)`$ are frozen for as long as the Hubble expansion rate $`H`$ of the Universe dominates over their frequency. We refer to that as the $`tail`$ of the dispersion graph. In Fig. (2), for the dispersed $`\omega ^2(k)`$ vs. $`k`$, the tail corresponds to all the modes beyond the point $`k_H`$, where $`k_H`$ is defined by the condition $`\omega ^2(k_H)=H_0^2`$, where $`H_0`$ is the Hubble rate today. It then follows that the tail modes are still frozen at present. We calculate the total energy of the particles by using Eq. (15), as well as the frozen energy of the $`tail`$. Thus the energy of the tail is a contribution to the dark energy of the universe: up to present it has the equation of state of a cosmological constant term. However, through the Friedmann equation, $`H`$ is a decreasing function of time because until now it has been dominated by the energy density of matter and radiation. Therefore, whenever $`H`$ drops below the frequency $`\omega `$ of an ultralow frequency mode, this mode becomes dynamic by picking a kinetic term and redshifts away very quickly. Hence, when the dominant contribution to the evolution equation for $`H`$ comes from the $`tail`$ energy, the behaviour of those modes with equations of motion coupled to the Friedmann equation becomes very complex. It is hard to calculate at which rate $`H`$ drops in this situation. If eventually, $`H`$ drops all the way to zero, all the modes in the tail must have decayed. Their equation of state, when $`H`$ becomes zero, is that of radiation. The reason can be traced back at their origin in transplanckian regime. It is well known that scalar perturbations produced during inflation do not contribute to the total energy. Thus the origin of this modes is in the tensor perturbations. In their physical nature they correspond to gravitational waves of very short distance but ultralow energy777We thank S. Carroll for pointing this out.. We calculate their energy today in Section 4.

We would like to elaborate on yet another possibility, which has not been mentioned before in the literature, that can give rise to a similar dispersion relation: very short or very large distance physics may have a curvature different from the FLRW element of Eq. (1), e.g. a different scale factor. This becomes clearer when recognizing the strong relation between the time-dependent dispersion relation and the curvature given by the time derivatives of the scale factor $`a(\eta )`$. The basic argument is the observation that the modulated frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n^2`$ in the wave equation contains the contribution of these two terms, as given in Eq. (6). Therefore, while keeping the generalised frequency invariant, changing the first term in $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n^2`$ can be viewed or attributed to changes in the second term, such that:

$$\mathrm{\Omega }_n^2=a^2\omega _{nonlinear,k}^2(16\xi )\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}=𝒜^2\omega _{linear,k}^2(16\xi )\frac{𝒜^{\prime \prime }}{𝒜},$$
(16)
where $`𝒜`$ is the new scale factor at very short distances. Even in the conformal case $`\xi =1/6`$, when the term $`a^{\prime \prime }/a`$ drops out of Eq. (5), the time dependent frequency $`\omega _{nonlinear,k}^2`$ can mimic a term proportional to $`a^{\prime \prime }/a`$ at $`\lambda (\eta )k_C1`$. Thus, any modulation of the dispersion relation is equivalent to a change in the behavior of the time-dependence of the background (a.k.a., the scale factor/curvature). In other words, we could have introduced a different curvature at very short (or large) distances from the start instead of a dispersed frequency888 We are using this equivalence in a sequencial paper  to demonstrate that a different large scale curvature of the universe is not possible as it conflicts with the observed CMBR data. Therefore, trying to reinterpret the SN1a data in the light of a possible different curvature for the large scale regions of the universe may be ruled out..

## 3 Exact Solution and the CMBR Spectrum

We will consider the class of inflationary scenarios that through Eqs. (7) and (8) has a power law solution for the scale factor $`a(\eta )`$ in conformal time, $`a(\eta )=|\eta _c/\eta |^\beta `$, with $`\beta 1`$, and the following Epstein function  for the dispersion relation:

$`\omega ^2(k)`$ $`=`$ $`F^2(k)=k^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_1}{1+e^x}}+{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_2e^x}{1+e^x}}+{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_3e^x}{(1+e^x)^2}}\right),`$ (17)
$`n_{eff}^2`$ $`=`$ $`a^2(\eta )F^2(n,\eta )=n^2\left({\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_1}{1+e^x}}+{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_2e^x}{1+e^x}}+{\displaystyle \frac{ϵ_3e^x}{(1+e^x)^2}}\right),`$ (18)
where $`x=(k/k_C)^{1/\beta }=A|\eta |`$, with $`A=(1/|\eta _c|)(n/k_C)^{1/\beta }`$. This is the most general expression for this family of functions. For our purposes, we will constrain some of the parameters of the Epstein family in order to satisfy the features required for the dispersion relation as follows. First, imposing the requirement of superstring duality, in order to have ultralow frequencies for very high momenta, we demand that the dispersion functions go asymptotically to zero. That fixes

$$ϵ_2=0.$$
(19)
On the other hand, the condition of a nearly linear dispersion relation for $`k<k_C`$ requires that

$$\frac{ϵ_1}{2}+\frac{ϵ_3}{4}=1.$$
(20)
Still we will have a whole family of functions parametrised by the constant $`ϵ_1`$, as can be seen in Fig. 1.

With the change of variables $`\eta u=exp(A|\eta |)`$, the scalar wave equation (5) for the mode $`\mu _n`$ becomes:

$$\left[_u^2+\frac{1}{u}_u+V(u)\right]\mu _n=0,$$
(21)
with:

$$V(u)=\frac{\widehat{ϵ}_1}{u^2(1+u)}+\frac{\widehat{ϵ}_3}{u(u+1)^2}\frac{(16\xi )}{u^2A^2}\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a},$$
(22)
where:

$$\widehat{ϵ_i}=(k_C|\eta _c|)^2\left(\frac{n}{k_C}\right)^{2(11/\beta )}ϵ_i.$$
(23)
In the case of conformal coupling to gravity, $`\xi =1/6`$, Eq. (21) is exactly solvable in terms of hypergeometric functions . This is a well studied case in the context of particle creation in a curved background . Even if we are not in the case of conformal coupling, the contribution

$$\frac{a^{\prime \prime }}{a}=\frac{\beta (\beta +1)}{\eta ^2},$$
(24)
is going to be negligible at early times ($`\eta \mathrm{}`$); at late times, it can be absorbed in the dispersion relation Eq. (18) redefining the constants $`ϵ_i`$.

As explained in Section 2, the correct initial condition is the vacuum state solution that minimizes the energy. In the case where $`ϵ_20`$, this vacuum state behaves as a plane wave in the asymptotic limit $`\eta \mathrm{}`$, with $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{(in)}\sqrt{ϵ_2}n`$. However, when $`ϵ_2=0`$ as in our case, the correct behavior of the mode function in the remote past is given by the solution of Eq. (5) in the limit $`\eta \mathrm{}`$. The exact solution which matches this asymptotic behavior is then given by:

$$\mu ^{(in)}(\eta )=C^{in}\left(\frac{1+u}{u}\right)^d{}_{2}{}^{}F_{1}^{}[\frac{1}{2}+d+b,\frac{1}{2}+db,1+2d,\frac{1+u}{u}],$$
(25)
where $`C^{in}`$ is a normalization constant, and

$`b`$ $`=`$ $`i\stackrel{~}{b}=i\sqrt{\widehat{ϵ}_1},`$ (26)
$`d`$ $`=`$ $`i\stackrel{~}{d}=\sqrt{{\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}+\widehat{ϵ}_3}.`$ (27)
At late times the solution becomes a squeezed state by mixing of positive and negative frequencies:

$$\mu _n_{\eta +\mathrm{}}\frac{\alpha _n}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}}}e^{i\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}\eta }+\frac{\beta _n}{\sqrt{2\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}}}e^{+i\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}\eta },$$
(28)
with $`|\beta _n|^2`$ being the Bogoliubov coefficient equal to the particle creation number per mode $`n`$, and $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n^{out}\sqrt{ϵ_1}n`$. Using the linear transformation properties of hypergeometric functions , we find that999In the most general case, where $`ϵ_20`$ in Eq. (18), it is obtained :
$$\left|\frac{\beta _n}{\alpha _n}\right|=\left|\frac{\mathrm{cosh}\pi (\stackrel{~}{d}+\stackrel{~}{b}\stackrel{~}{a})}{\mathrm{cosh}\pi (\stackrel{~}{d}\stackrel{~}{b}\stackrel{~}{a})}\right|,$$
(29)  with $`\stackrel{~}{a}=\sqrt{\widehat{ϵ_2}}`$. Also in this case the spectrum of the fluctuations is nearly thermal, with the parameter $`\stackrel{~}{d}`$ controlling the deviation from thermality.

$`\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\beta _n}{\alpha _n}}\right|`$ $`=`$ $`e^{2\pi \stackrel{~}{b}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{cosh}\pi (\stackrel{~}{d}+\stackrel{~}{b})}{\mathrm{cosh}\pi (\stackrel{~}{d}\stackrel{~}{b})}}\right|.`$ (30)
If $`d`$ is a real number ($`ϵ_3^{}>1/4`$), then we obtain:

$$|\beta _n|^2=\frac{e^{2\pi \stackrel{~}{b}}}{2\mathrm{sinh}2\pi \stackrel{~}{b}}.$$
(31)
It is clear from Eqs. (30) and (31) that the spectrum of created particles is nearly thermal to high accuracy101010 We remind the reader that we have neglected the backreaction effects during the calculation, based on the result of a small particle number per mode, in the high momentum regime ($`kM_P`$) and a very small energy contained in these modes. Clearly, the particle number per mode being small is consistent with the result of the exponentially suppressed, near-thermal Bogoliubov coefficient. See Section 4 for the energy.,

$$|\beta _n|^2e^{4\pi \stackrel{~}{b}}.$$
(32)
Thus, we can immediately conclude that the CMBR spectrum is that of a (nearly) black body spectrum. That means the spectrum is (nearly) scale invariant, i.e., the spectral index is $`n_s1`$. This is consistent with previous results obtained in the literature , when using a smooth dispersion relation and the correct choice of the initial vacuum state, as discussed above. In Refs.  and , dispersion relations, that were originally applied to black hole physics , were used in the context of cosmology. New models of dispersion relations were proposed by the authors of Refs.  and . Our proposal for a 1-parameter class of models has a significantly different feature from the above, namely: the appearence of ultra-low frequency modes in the transplanckian regime. The implications of such a behavior for high momenta on the production of dark energy are discussed in the next section.

## 4 Dark Energy from the “Tail”

In Section 2 we defined the $`tail`$ as the range of those modes in the frequency dispersion class (originating from the transplanckian regime), whose frequency is less or at most equal to the present Hubble rate, $`H_0`$ (see Fig. 2). It then follows that they have not decayed and redshifted away but are still frozen $`today`$. Since $`H`$ has been a decreasing function of time, many modes, even those in the ultralow frequency range, have become dynamic and redshifted away one by one, everytime the above condition is broken, i.e. when the expansion rate $`H`$ dropped below their frequency. Clearly, the other modes have long decayed into radiation and the tail modes are the only modes still frozen. They contain vacuum energy of very short distance, hence of very low energy. The last mode in the tail would decay when and if $`H=0`$. When the tail modes become dynamic by acquiring a kinetic term (when $`\omega (k)>H`$), they decay away as gravitational waves (explained in Section 2). The $`tail`$ starts from some value $`k_H`$ which must be found by solving the equation

$$\omega ^2(k_H)=H_0^2.$$
(33)
The range of the modes defining the $`tail`$ is then for $`k_H<k<\mathrm{}`$. Their time-dependent behaviour when they decay depends on the evolution of $`H`$ and is complicated because they contribute to the expansion rate for $`H`$. Thus, their equations of motion are coupled to the Friedmann equation.

However we can calculate their contribution to the dark energy today, when they are still frozen, thereby mimicking a cosmological constant. We calculate numerically (using ’Mathematica’) the range of the modes in the tail from Eq. (33) and use this value for the limit of integration in the tail energy given by Eq. (15). Below we report these results for the case of a scale factor with $`\beta =1`$ but other values of $`\beta `$ were also considered numerically and they produce an even smaller dark energy due to the extra suppression in the integral coming from the Bogoliubov coefficient $`\beta _k^2`$. Eq. (33) is a messy transcendental equation but the solution to that equation is crucial to the dark energy since the value $`k_H`$ is the limit of the energy integral. That is why we solved Eq. (33) numerically and replaced it in Eq. (15) for the energy, using different representative values of the parameter $`ϵ_1`$.

The energy for the tail is given by:

$$\rho _{tail}=\frac{1}{2\pi ^2}_{k_H}^{\mathrm{}}k𝑑k\omega (k)𝑑\omega |\beta _k|^2,$$
(34)
while the expression for the total energy is:

$$\rho _{total}=\frac{1}{2\pi ^2}_0^{\mathrm{}}k𝑑k\omega (k)𝑑\omega |\beta _k|^2.$$
(35)
The numerical calculation of the tail energy produced the following result: for random different values of the free parameters, the dark energy of the tail is $`\rho _{tail}=10^{122}f(ϵ_1)`$, times less than the total energy during inflation, i.e. $`\frac{\rho _{tail}}{\rho _{total}}=10^{122}f(ϵ_1)`$ at Planck time. The prefactor $`f(ϵ_1)`$, which depends weakly on the parameter of the dispersion family $`ϵ_1`$, is a small number between 1 to 9, which clearly can contribute at the most by 1 order of magnitude.

This is an amazing result! It can readily be checked by plugging in the dispersion expression for $`\omega _k`$, Eq. (17), in the integral expression of Eq. (34) for the tail energy, then using as the limit of integration the value $`k_H`$ found by the condition in Eq. (33). This result can be understood qualitatively by noticing that the behavior of the frequency for the “tail” modes is nearly an exponential decay (see Eq. (17)), and as such dominates over the other terms in the energy integrand of Eq. (34):

$$\omega ^2(k>k_C)exp(k/k_C),$$
(36)
Hence, due to the decaying exponential, the main contribution to the energy integral in Eq. (34) comes from the highest value of this exponentially decaying frequency, which is the value of the integrand at the tail starting point, $`k_HO(M_P)`$, i.e.,

$$\frac{\rho _{tail}}{\rho _{total}}\frac{k_H^2}{M_P^4}\omega ^2(k_H)\frac{H_0^2}{M_P^2}10^{122}.$$
(37)
Due to the physical requirement that the tail modes must have always been frozen, the tail starting frequency $`\omega (k_H)`$ is then proportional to the current value of Hubble rate $`H_0`$ (Eq. (33)).

We suspect this result is generic for any scenario that features ultralow frequencies which exponentially decay to zero at very high momenta for two reasons. First, all the modes with an ultralow frequency $`\omega <H_0`$ will be frozen and thus produce dark energy. Secondly, their contribution to the energy may be small because of the following. Due to this kind of dispersion in the high momentum regime, the phase space available for the ultra-low frequency modes with $`\omega (k>k_C)`$ gets drastically reduced when compared to the phase space factor in the case of a non-dispersive transplanckian regime, controlling in this way these modes contribution to the energy density. The result for the tail energy also means that the tail energy dominates today’s expansion of the universe. Thus, at present, we can not tell a priori the evolution of these modes and the time when they may become dynamic. Only the solution to the equation for the modes coupled (strongly at present) to the Friedmann equation would answer the question as to whether $`H`$ will continue to decrease whith time. If that were the case, then these tail modes would also eventually become dynamic and decay. However, we calculated the equation of state for the limiting case when $`H=0`$. In this case, all the modes in the tail are dynamic. The calculation of the energy density of the tail in the dynamic case from Eq. (15) confirms that the tail decays in the form of radiation, as expected since their physical nature is that of gravity waves of very short distances (but ultralow energy), originating from tensor perturbations during inflation.

The opposite case is also a possible outcome to the coupled equations. It’s possible that the frozen modes of the tail will prevent $`H`$ from dropping further below, in which case these modes will never decay. We have not solved these coupled equation yet, therefore we are just speculating on the two possible outcomes of that calculation. The solution is left for future work.

At present, these modes, originating from the transplanckian regime, are behaving as dark energy of the same magnitude as the current total energy in the universe. This idea is then a leap forward to this longstanding and challenging problem of dark energy, for at least two reasons: first, inspired by superstring duality, it is very plausible to speak of scenarios with ultralow frequencies and very high momenta. The tail modes, that are frozen at present, provide a good candidate for the dark energy as our calculations show. Secondly, although smooth dispersion functions that model the transplanckian regime do not affect the CMBR spectrum, this regime still leaves its imprints in the contribution to the energy of the universe. This is a rich and currently underexplored area to consider with respect to the cosmological constant mystery.

## 5 Conclusions

In this work we investigated two phenomenological aspects of transplanckian physics: the issue of dark energy production, and the sensitivity of the observed CMBR spectrum to the transplanckian regime. For this purpose, a family of dispersion relations is introduced that modulate the high frequencies of the inflationary perturbation modes at large values of the momenta $`k`$ for the transplanckian regime. The smooth dispersion relations are chosen such that the frequency graph attenuates to zero at very high $`k`$, thereby producing ultralow frequencies corresponding to very short distances, but it is nearly linear for low values of $`k`$ up to the cuttoff scale $`k_C=M_P`$.

We present the exact solutions to the mode equations and calculate the spectrum through the method of Bogoliubov coefficients. The resulting CMBR spectrum is shown to be (nearly) that of a black body. This calculation lends strong support to the conjecture that smooth dispersion relations which ensure an adiabatic time-evolution of the modes produce a nearly scale invariant spectrum. Further, we elaborate on the issue of the initial conditions to which the spectrum is highly sensitive and show that there is no ambiguity in the correct choice of the initial vacuum state. The only initial vacuum is the adiabatic vacuum obtained by the solution to the mode equation. On the other hand, we showed that the assumption of neglecting the possible back reaction effects of the tail modes on the inflaton field is reasonable and is justified by the result of the tail energy calculation of Section 4. Also the Bogoliubov coefficient obtained, Eq. (29), is exponentially suppressed, so back-reaction does not become significant. We would also like to stress that due to the dispersion class of functions chosen, defined in the whole range of momenta from zero to infinity, the total energy contribution of the modes produced is finite, without the need of applying any renormalization/subtraction scheme. In a sense, the regularization-renormalization procedure is encoded in the class of dispersion we postulate111111Because of these two results, we do not have the problems mentioned in Refs.  when discussing trans-planckian physics..

The most exciting result of this work is the generation of dark energy in the observed amount for the present universe . This has its origin at the transplanckian regime, due to the presence of the dispersed tail modes with ultralow frequencies equal or less than the current Hubble constant. The evolution of these modes is given by their equation of motion, and it depends on the Hubble rate through the friction-like term $`3H_0\dot{\mu }_n`$. On the other hand, the evolution of the Hubble rate, given by the Friedmann equation, contains contribution from the energy of these modes. But currently, the Hubble constant dominates over their frequency in the mode equation of motion. It then follows that the tail modes, up to present, are still frozen and have been behaving like a cosmological constant term. Therefore their energy is dark energy121212For a different mechanism of generating a constant energy density, through the backreaction of cosmological perturbations, that mimics a cosmological constant term, see Refs. ..

We have calculated numerically the energy of the $`tail`$ during the inflationary stage for different values of the dispersion parameter $`ϵ`$. The calculation showed that the tail energy was $`10^{122}`$ (times a prefactor $`f(ϵ_1)`$ which weakly depends on $`ϵ_1`$ and, for random values of the parameter, takes values between 1 to 9) orders less than the total energy during inflation. This result is true for the whole class of dispersion relations. We chose different random values of the 1-parameter dispersion family $`ϵ_1`$, and the numerical calculation shows that $`ϵ_1`$ influences the energy at the most by less than an order of magnitude. We did not need to do any tuning of the parameters and used the Planck scale as the fundamental scale of the theory. Clearly, at present the tail energy dominates in the Friedmann equation, if the ratio of its energy to the total energy (as found by the calculation) was $`10^{122}f(ϵ_1)`$ during inflation. The $`tail`$ thus provides a strong candidate for explaining the dark energy of the universe . We suspect that the above result of producing such an extremely small number for the $`tail`$ energy without any fine-tuning (and by using $`M_P`$ as the only fundamental scale of the theory), is generic for any dispersion graph with a $`tail`$. The family of dispersion relations that feature a $`tail`$, corresponding to vacuum modes of very short distances, was motivated by superstring duality .

However, in Section 2 we made the observation that introducing a dispersion relation is equivalent to introducing changes in the curvature of the universe, at very short or very large distances while keeping the generalized frequency $`\mathrm{\Omega }_n`$ of Eq. (5) invariant. It is quite possible that the dispersion relation for the $`tail`$ modes results from a different curvature of the universe at very short distances. This is an important link and we use it in a sequential paper  to demonstrate that the SN1a data can not be reinterpreted away by changing the large scale curvature of the universe. Although it is counterintuitive, since large distance would correspond to low energy theories, we show in  that any changes in large scale curvature would disagree with the observed CMBR spectrum.

It would be interesting to know what happens to the tail and the Hubble rate in the future. After all, a model is useful in so far as it can make future predictions. Although conceptually it is straightforward to find out the answer, given by the solution to the coupled equations (5), (7) and (8), technically it appears difficult to predict the future evolution of the tail modes. The technical difficulty lies in the fact that at present, the $`tail`$ equation of motion is strongly coupled to the Friedmann equation for $`H`$ since the $`tail`$ energy dominates. The Hubble rate would continue to decrease only if these modes decay, but these modes can decay only when the Hubble rate decreases below their frequency. It may be possible that the frozen tail will sustain a constant Hubble rate which in turn will not allow the further decay of the tail modes. It is also possible that $`H`$ will continue to decrease in which case the tail modes will become dynamic and redshift away in the future. It is only the solution to the mode equations coupled to the Friedmann equation, that will provide the answer on whether the Hubble constant and tail will decay in the future or remain at their current value. We do not have this solution yet, and the work is left for future investigation. In addition, the equation of state, $`w(t)=p/\rho `$, is an $`observable`$ that will provide a test to the model , especially with the new data coming in the near future from the SNAP  and SDSS  missions.

However, we know that currently these $`tail`$ modes are frozen vacuum modes of ultralow energy but very short distance, thus their energy behaves like a cosmological constant energy. We also know they become dynamic and acquire a kinetic term only when the Hubble rate drops below the frequency. And, if they decay, the product is radiation of gravity waves at very short distances since their physical origin is from the tensor perturbations during inflation (it is well known that scalar perturbations do not contribute to the energy). The condition for the decay of the last mode in the tail is fulfilled when $`H`$ has dropped to zero.

Many of our results, e.g. the dispersion family and the exact solutions together with the Bogoliubov coefficients, could be applied to the Black Hole Physics. The issue of transplanckian physics was originally raised in the Black Hole context with respect to the sensitivity of the Hawking radiation to the blueshifted, superplanckian energy wavepackets. Following a phenomenological approach, a few dispersive models were introduced - in order to introduce a bound on the blueshifted energies and check the sensitivity of the black hole spectrum. We have introduced a new, different family of dispersive models, that also gives rise to a thermal spectrum. The analytical results of our class of dispersion models can be applied to the black hole physics and reproduce the same thermal Hawking spectrum. There are many subtleties involved due to the different symmetries of the two scenarios, but these issues are beyond the purpose and scope of this paper. It is left for future work. However, if the Hawking radiation for this class of dispersions is again thermal, it lends strong support to Unruh’s conjecture that black hole radiation is insensitive to physics in the far ultraviolet (trans-planckian) regime, being predominantly an infrared effect. On the other hand, our class of models departs from the previous ones in the asymptotic behavior at very high momenta, with the presence of an infinite “tail” of ultralow frequency modes. The $`tail`$ feature and energy results, applied to a black hole case, may raise interesting issues, in particular with respect to the black hole’s information loss paradox.

Acknowledgment: We are very grateful to A. Riotto for many beneficial comments and for pointing out the connection with superstring duality. We also want to thank R. Barbieri, R. Rattazzi, L. Pilo, S. Carroll, C. T. Hill for helpful discussions. P.K. would like to acknowledge financial support by EC under the TMR contract No. HPRN-CT-2000-00148.