We extend the concept of a Hubbard tree, well established and useful in the theory of polynomial dynamics, to the dynamics of transcendental entire functions. We show that Hubbard trees in the strict traditional sense, as invariant compact trees embedded in $\mathbb {C}$ , do not exist even for post-singularly finite exponential maps; the difficulty lies in the existence of asymptotic values. We therefore introduce the concept of a homotopy Hubbard tree that takes care of these difficulties. Specifically for the family of exponential maps, we show that every post-singularly finite map has a homotopy Hubbard tree that is unique up to homotopy, and that post-singularly finite exponential maps can be classified in terms of homotopy Hubbard trees, using a transcendental analogue of Thurston’s topological characterization theorem of rational maps.

Foreman and Weiss [Measure preserving diffeomorphisms of the torus are unclassifiable. Preprint, 2020, arXiv:1705.04414] obtained an anti-classification result for smooth ergodic diffeomorphisms, up to measure isomorphism, by using a functor $\mathcal {F}$ (see [Foreman and Weiss, From odometers to circular systems: a global structure theorem. J. Mod. Dyn.15 (2019), 345–423]) mapping odometer-based systems, $\mathcal {OB}$ , to circular systems, $\mathcal {CB}$ . This functor transfers the classification problem from $\mathcal {OB}$ to $\mathcal {CB}$ , and it preserves weakly mixing extensions, compact extensions, factor maps, the rank-one property, and certain types of isomorphisms. Thus it is natural to ask whether $\mathcal {F}$ preserves other dynamical properties. We show that $\mathcal {F}$ does not preserve the loosely Bernoulli property by providing positive and zero-entropy examples of loosely Bernoulli odometer-based systems whose corresponding circular systems are not loosely Bernoulli. We also construct a loosely Bernoulli circular system whose corresponding odometer-based system has zero entropy and is not loosely Bernoulli.

The renormalization group method has been developed to investigate p-adic q-state Potts models on the Cayley tree of order k. This method is closely related to the examination of dynamical behavior of the p-adic Potts–Bethe mapping which depends on the parameters q, k. In Mukhamedov and Khakimov [Chaotic behavior of the p-adic Potts–Behte mapping. Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 38 (2018), 231–245], we have considered the case when q is not divisible by p and, under some conditions, it was established that the mapping is conjugate to the full shift on $\kappa _p$ symbols (here $\kappa _p$ is the greatest common factor of k and $p-1$ ). The present paper is a continuation of the forementioned paper, but here we investigate the case when q is divisible by p and k is arbitrary. We are able to fully describe the dynamical behavior of the p-adic Potts–Bethe mapping by means of a Markov partition. Moreover, the existence of a Julia set is established, over which the mapping exhibits a chaotic behavior. We point out that a similar result is not known in the case of real numbers (with rigorous proofs).

For any infinite transitive sofic shift X we construct a reversible cellular automaton (that is, an automorphism of the shift X) which breaks any given finite point of the subshift into a finite collection of gliders traveling into opposing directions. This shows in addition that every infinite transitive sofic shift has a reversible cellular automaton which is sensitive with respect to all directions. As another application we prove a finitary version of Ryan’s theorem: the automorphism group $\operatorname {\mathrm {Aut}}(X)$ contains a two-element subset whose centralizer consists only of shift maps. We also show that in the class of S-gap shifts these results do not extend beyond the sofic case.

We construct the complete set of orders of growth and define on it the generalized entropy of a dynamical system. With this object, we provide a framework wherein we can study the separation of orbits of a map beyond the scope of exponential growth. We show that this construction is particularly useful for studying families of dynamical systems with vanishing entropy. Moreover, we see that the space of orders of growth in which orbits are separated is wilder than expected. We achieve this with different types of examples.

A celebrated theorem of Douglas Lind states that a positive real number is equal to the spectral radius of some integral primitive matrix, if and only if, it is a Perron algebraic integer. Given a Perron number p, we prove that there is an integral irreducible matrix with spectral radius p, and with dimension bounded above in terms of the algebraic degree, the ratio of the first two largest Galois conjugates, and arithmetic information about the ring of integers of its number field. This arithmetic information can be taken to be either the discriminant or the minimal Hermite-like thickness. Equivalently, given a Perron number p, there is an irreducible shift of finite type with entropy $\log (p)$ defined as an edge shift on a graph whose number of vertices is bounded above in terms of the aforementioned data.

We investigate to what extent a minimal topological dynamical system is uniquely determined by a set of return times to some open set. We show that in many situations, this is indeed the case as long as the closure of this open set has no non-trivial translational symmetries. For instance, we show that under this assumption, two Kronecker systems with the same set of return times must be isomorphic. More generally, we show that if a minimal dynamical system has a set of return times that coincides with a set of return times to some open set in a Kronecker system with translationarily asymmetric closure, then that Kronecker system must be a factor. We also study similar problems involving nilsystems and polynomial return times. We state a number of questions on whether these results extend to other homogeneous spaces and transitive group actions, some of which are already interesting for finite groups.

We develop a forcing theory of topological entropy for Reeb flows in dimension three. A transverse link L in a closed contact $3$ -manifold $(Y,\xi )$ is said to force topological entropy if $(Y,\xi )$ admits a Reeb flow with vanishing topological entropy, and every Reeb flow on $(Y,\xi )$ realizing L as a set of periodic Reeb orbits has positive topological entropy. Our main results establish topological conditions on a transverse link L, which imply that L forces topological entropy. These conditions are formulated in terms of two Floer theoretical invariants: the cylindrical contact homology on the complement of transverse links introduced by Momin [A. Momin. J. Mod. Dyn.5 (2011), 409–472], and the strip Legendrian contact homology on the complement of transverse links, introduced by Alves [M. R. R. Alves. PhD Thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2014] and further developed here. We then use these results to show that on every closed contact $3$ -manifold that admits a Reeb flow with vanishing topological entropy, there exist transverse knots that force topological entropy.

Dendric shifts are defined by combinatorial restrictions of the extensions of the words in their languages. This family generalizes well-known families of shifts such as Sturmian shifts, Arnoux–Rauzy shifts and codings of interval exchange transformations. It is known that any minimal dendric shift has a primitive $\mathcal {S}$ -adic representation where the morphisms in $\mathcal {S}$ are positive tame automorphisms of the free group generated by the alphabet. In this paper, we investigate those $\mathcal {S}$ -adic representations, heading towards an $\mathcal {S}$ -adic characterization of this family. We obtain such a characterization in the ternary case, involving a directed graph with two vertices.

We consider the complexity of special $\alpha $ -limit sets, a kind of backward limit set for non-invertible dynamical systems. We show that these sets are always analytic, but not necessarily Borel, even in the case of a surjective map on the unit square. This answers a question posed by Kolyada, Misiurewicz, and Snoha.

We consider backward filtrations generated by processes coming from deterministic and probabilistic cellular automata. We prove that these filtrations are standard in the classical sense of Vershik’s theory, but we also study them from another point of view that takes into account the measure-preserving action of the shift map, for which each sigma-algebra in the filtrations is invariant. This initiates what we call the dynamical classification of factor filtrations, and the examples we study show that this classification leads to different results.

Mixing rates, relaxation rates, and decay of correlations for dynamics defined by potentials with summable variations are well understood, but little is known for non-summable variations. This paper exhibits upper bounds for these quantities for dynamics defined by potentials with square-summable variations. We obtain these bounds as corollaries of a new block coupling inequality between pairs of dynamics starting with different histories. As applications of our results, we prove a new weak invariance principle and a Hoeffding-type inequality.

It has been recently proved that the automorphism group of a minimal subshift with non-superlinear word complexity is virtually $\mathbb {Z}$ [Cyr and Kra. The automorphism group of a shift of linear growth: beyond transitivity. Forum Math. Sigma3 (2015), e5; Donoso et al. On automorphism groups of low complexity subshifts. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.36(1) (2016), 64–95]. In this article we extend this result to a broader class proving that the automorphism group of a minimal $\mathcal {S}$ -adic subshift of finite alphabet rank is virtually $\mathbb {Z}$ . The proof is based on a fine combinatorial analysis of the asymptotic classes in this type of subshifts, which we prove are a finite number.

We prove that the automorphism group of the semigeneric directed graph (in the sense of Cherlin’s classification) is uniquely ergodic.

We prove that in every compact space of Delone sets in ${\mathbb {R}}^d$ , which is minimal with respect to the action by translations, either all Delone sets are uniformly spread or continuously many distinct bounded displacement equivalence classes are represented, none of which contains a lattice. The implied limits are taken with respect to the Chabauty–Fell topology, which is the natural topology on the space of closed subsets of ${\mathbb {R}}^d$ . This topology coincides with the standard local topology in the finite local complexity setting, and it follows that the dichotomy holds for all minimal spaces of Delone sets associated with well-studied constructions such as cut-and-project sets and substitution tilings, whether or not finite local complexity is assumed.

A Cantor minimal system is of finite topological rank if it has a Bratteli–Vershik representation whose number of vertices per level is uniformly bounded. We prove that if the topological rank of a minimal dynamical system on a Cantor set is finite, then all its minimal Cantor factors have finite topological rank as well. This gives an affirmative answer to a question posed by Donoso, Durand, Maass, and Petite in full generality. As a consequence, we obtain the dichotomy of Downarowicz and Maass for Cantor factors of finite-rank Cantor minimal systems: they are either odometers or subshifts.

We characterize topological conjugacy classes of one-sided topological Markov shifts in terms of the associated Cuntz–Krieger algebras and their gauge actions with potentials.

We give an example of a principal algebraic action of the non-commutative free group ${\mathbb {F}}$ of rank two by automorphisms of a connected compact abelian group for which there is an explicit measurable isomorphism with the full Bernoulli 3-shift action of ${\mathbb {F}}$ . The isomorphism is defined using homoclinic points, a method that has been used to construct symbolic covers of algebraic actions. To our knowledge, this is the first example of a Bernoulli algebraic action of ${\mathbb {F}}$ without an obvious independent generator. Our methods can be generalized to a large class of acting groups.

We show that the dynamic asymptotic dimension of an action of an infinite virtually cyclic group on a compact Hausdorff space is always one if the action has the marker property. This in particular covers a well-known result of Guentner, Willett, and Yu for minimal free actions of infinite cyclic groups. As a direct consequence, we substantially extend a famous result by Toms and Winter on the nuclear dimension of $C^{*}$-algebras arising from minimal free $\mathbb {Z}$-actions. Moreover, we also prove the marker property for all free actions of countable groups on finite-dimensional compact Hausdorff spaces, generalizing a result of Szabó in the metrisable setting.