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Hyperbolicity and bifurcations in holomorphic families of polynomial skew products

We initiate a parametric study of holomorphic families of polynomial skew products, i.e., polynomial endomorphisms of $\mathbb{C}^2$ of the form $F(z,w)= (p(z), q(z,w))$ that extend to holomorphic endomorphisms of $\mathbb{P}^2(\mathbb{C})$. We prove that dynamical stability in the sense of arXiv:1403.7603 preserves hyperbolicity within such families, and give a complete classification of the hyperbolic components that are the analogue, in this setting, of the complement of the Mandelbrot set for the family $z^2 +c$. We also precisely describe the geometry of the bifurcation locus and current near the boundary of the parameter space. One of our tools is an asymptotic equidistribution property for the bifurcation current. This is established in the general setting of families of endomorphisms of $\mathbb{P}^k$ and is the first equidistribution result of this kind for holomorphic dynamical systems in dimension larger than one.