Compact noncontraction semigroups of affine operators

We analyze compact multiplicative semigroups of affine operators acting in a finite-dimensional space. The main result states that every such semigroup is either contracting, that is, contains elements of arbitrarily small operator norm, or all its operators share a common invariant affine subspace on which this semigroup is contracting. The proof uses functional difference equations with contraction of the argument. We look at applications to self-affine partitions of convex sets, the investigation of finite affine semigroups and the proof of a criterion of primitivity for nonnegative matrix families.