We study the global behavior of the renormalization operator on a specially constructed Banach manifold that has cubic critical circle maps on its boundary and circle diffeomorphisms in its interior. As an application, we prove results on smoothness of irrational Arnold tongues.

We construct a renormalization operator which acts on analytic circle maps whose critical exponent $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ is not necessarily an odd integer $2n+1$, $n\in \mathbb{N}$. When $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}=2n+1$, our definition generalizes cylinder renormalization of analytic critical circle maps by Yampolsky [Hyperbolicity of renormalization of critical circle maps. Publ. Math. Inst. Hautes Études Sci.96 (2002), 1–41]. In the case when $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}$ is close to an odd integer, we prove hyperbolicity of renormalization for maps of bounded type. We use it to prove universality and $C^{1+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}$-rigidity for such maps.

We present the first example of a poly-time computable Julia set with a recurrent critical point: we prove that the Julia set of the Feigenbaum map is computable in polynomial time.

We use the methods developed with Lyubich for proving complex bounds for real quadratics to extend de Faria's complex a priori bounds to all critical circle maps with an irrational rotation number. The contracting property for renormalizations of critical circle maps follows.

As another application of our methods we present a new proof of a theorem of Petersen on local connectivity of some Siegel Julia sets.