Abstract. We investigate the combinatorial and dynamical properties of socalled nearly Euclidean Thurston maps, or NET maps. These maps are perturbations of many-to-one folding maps of an affine two-sphere to itself. The close relationship between NET maps and affine maps makes computation of many invariants tractable. In addition to this, NET maps are quite diverse, exhibiting many different behaviors. We discuss data, findings, and new phenomena.
A Thurston map is called nearly Euclidean if its local degree at each critical point is 2 and it has exactly four postcritical points. Nearly Euclidean Thurston (NET) maps are simple generalizations of rational Lattès maps. We investigate when such a map has the property that the associated pullback map on Teichmüller space is constant. We also show that no Thurston map of degree 2 has constant pullback map.
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