In this paper geometric properties of infinitely renormalizable real Hénon-like maps $F$ in $\mathbb{R}^2$ are studied. It is shown that the appropriately defined renormalizations $R^n F$ converge exponentially to the one-dimensional renormalization fixed point. The convergence to one-dimensional systems is at a super-exponential rate controlled by the average Jacobian and a universal function $a(x)$. It is also shown that the attracting Cantor set of such a map has Hausdorff dimension less than 1, but contrary to the one-dimensional intuition, it is not rigid, does not lie on a smooth curve, and generically has unbounded geometry.

This paper proves a theorem about bounding orbits of a time dependent dynamical system. The maps that are involved are examples in convex dynamics, by which we mean the dynamics of piecewise isometries where the pieces are convex. The theorem came to the attention of the authors in connection with the problem of digital halftoning. $\textit{Digital halftoning}$ is a family of printing technologies for getting full color images from only a few different colors deposited at dots all of the same size. The simplest version consist in obtaining grey scale images from only black and white dots. A corollary of the theorem is that for $\textit{error diffusion}$, one of the methods of digital halftoning, averages of colors of the printed dots converge to averages of the colors taken from the same dots of the actual images. Digital printing is a special case of a much wider class of scheduling problems to which the theorem applies. Convex dynamics has roots in classical areas of mathematics such as symbolic dynamics, Diophantine approximation, and the theory of uniform distributions.

We give examples of infinitely renormalizable quadratic polynomials $F_c: z\mapsto z^2+c$ with stationary combinatorics whose Julia sets have Hausdorff dimension arbitrary close to 1. The combinatorics of the renormalization involved is close to the Chebyshev one. The argument is based upon a new tool, a "Recursive Quadratic Estimate" for the Poincaré series of an infinitely renormalizable map.

In the paper we discuss two questions about smooth expanding dynamical systems on the circle. (i) We characterize the sequences of asymptotic length ratios which occur for systems with Hölder continuous derivative. The sequence of asymptotic length ratios are precisely those given by a positive Hölder continuous function $s$ (solenoid function) on the Cantor set $C$ of $2$-adic integers satisfying a functional equation called the matching condition. The functional equation for the $2$-adic integer Cantor set is $$s (2x+1)= \frac{s (x)} {s (2x)} \left( 1+\frac{1}{ s (2x-1)}\right)-1.$$ We also present a one-to-one correspondence between solenoid functions and affine classes of $2$-adic quasiperiodic tilings of the real line that are fixed points of the 2-amalgamation operator. (ii) We calculate the precise maximum possible level of smoothness for a representative of the system, up to diffeomorphic conjugacy, in terms of the functions $s$ and $cr(x)=(1+s(x))/(1+(s(x+1))^{-1})$. For example, in the Lipschitz structure on $C$ determined by $s$, the maximum smoothness is $C^{1+\alpha}$ for $0 < \alpha \le 1$ if, and only if, $s$ is $\alpha$-H\"older continuous. The maximum smoothness is $C^{2+\alpha}$ for $0 < \alpha \le 1$ if, and only if, $cr$ is $(1+\alpha)$-H\"older. A curious connection with Mostow type rigidity is provided by the fact that $s$ must be constant if it is $\alpha$-H\"older for $\alpha > 1$.