Free semigroups of power series

Source abstract

Given power series $f_1,\dots,f_r\in z^2K[[z]]$ over a field of characteristic zero, we show that the semigroup $\langle f_1,\dots,f_r\rangle$ generated by the $f$'s under composition is free of rank $r$ whenever the multiplicative semigroup $\langle\mathrm{lc}(f_1),\dots,\mathrm{lc}(f_r)\rangle$ in $K^\times$ is free commutative of rank $r$; here $\mathrm{lc}(f)$ denotes the first nonzero coefficient of $f$. To do this, we associate an affine linear transformation to every $F\in\langle f_1,\dots,f_r\rangle$ and then apply a ping-pong lemma. In particular, combining this with work of Pappalardi, Sha, Shparlinski, and Stewart, it follows that most semigroups of polynomials over a number field $K$ are free, and we make this statement precise through a counting argument.