Singularities and growth of higher order discrete equations

We study the link between the degree growth of integrable birational mappings of order higher than two and their singularity structures. The higher order mappings we use in this study are all obtained by coupling mappings that are integrable through spectral methods, typically belonging to the QRT family, to a variety of linearisable ones. We show that by judiciously choosing these linearisable mappings, it is possible to obtain higher order mappings that exhibit the maximal degree growth compatible with integrability, i.e. for which the degree grows as a polynomial of order equal to the order of the mapping. In all the cases we analysed, we found that maximal degree growth was associated with the existence of an unconfining singularity pattern. Several cases with submaximal growth but which still possess unconfining singularity patterns are also presented. In many cases the exact degrees of the iterates of the mappings were obtained by applying a method due to Halburd, based on the preimages of specific values that appear in the singularity patterns of the mapping, but we also present some examples where such a calculation appears to be impossible.