We develop a thermodynamic formalism for a smooth realization of pseudo-Anosov surface homeomorphisms. In this realization, the singularities of the pseudo-Anosov map are assumed to be fixed, and the trajectories are slowed down so the differential is the identity at these points. Using Young towers, we prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states for geometric t-potentials. This family of equilibrium states includes a unique SRB measure and a measure of maximal entropy, the latter of which has exponential decay of correlations and the central limit theorem.

Stable accessibility of partially hyperbolic systems is central to their stable ergodicity, and we establish its $C^1$-density among partially hyperbolic flows, as well as in the categories of volume-preserving, symplectic, and contact partially hyperbolic flows. As applications, we obtain on one hand in each of these four categories of flows the $C^1$-density of the $C^1$-stable topological transitivity and triviality of the centralizer, and on the other hand the $C^1$-density of the $C^1$-stable K-property of the natural volume in the latter three categories.

We give a necessary and sufficient condition on $\beta $ of the natural extension of a $\beta $-shift, so that any equilibrium measure for a function of bounded total oscillations is a weak Gibbs measure.

We prove that, up to topological conjugacy, every Smale space admits an Ahlfors regular Bowen measure. Bowen’s construction of Markov partitions implies that Smale spaces are factors of topological Markov chains. The latter are equipped with Parry’s measure, which is Ahlfors regular. By extending Bowen’s construction, we create a tool for transferring the Ahlfors regularity of the Parry measure down to the Bowen measure of the Smale space. An essential part of our method uses a refined notion of approximation graphs over compact metric spaces. Moreover, we obtain new estimates for the Hausdorff, box-counting and Assouad dimensions of a large class of Smale spaces.

Let $g_0$ be a smooth pinched negatively curved Riemannian metric on a complete surface N, and let $\Lambda _0$ be a basic hyperbolic set of the geodesic flow of $g_0$ with Hausdorff dimension strictly smaller than two. Given a small smooth perturbation g of $g_0$ and a smooth real-valued function f on the unit tangent bundle to N with respect to g, let $L_{g,\Lambda ,f}$ (respectively $M_{g,\Lambda ,f}$) be the Lagrange (respectively Markov) spectrum of asymptotic highest (respectively highest) values of f along the geodesics in the hyperbolic continuation $\Lambda $ of $\Lambda _0$. We prove that for generic choices of g and f, the Hausdorff dimensions of the sets $L_{g,\Lambda , f}\cap (-\infty , t)$ vary continuously with $t\in \mathbb {R}$ and, moreover, $M_{g,\Lambda , f}\cap (-\infty , t)$ has the same Hausdorff dimension as $L_{g,\Lambda , f}\cap (-\infty , t)$ for all $t\in \mathbb {R}$.

We prove the central limit theorem of random variables induced by distances to Brownian paths and Green functions on the universal cover of Riemannian manifolds of finite volume with pinched negative curvature. We further provide some ergodic properties of Brownian motions and an application of the central limit theorem to the dynamics of geodesic flows in pinched negative curvature.

In this paper we investigate the Margulis–Ruelle inequality for general Riemannian manifolds (possibly non-compact and with a boundary) and show that it always holds under an integrable condition.

Given a closed, orientable, compact surface S of constant negative curvature and genus $g \geq 2$, we study the measure-theoretic entropy of the Bowen–Series boundary map with respect to its smooth invariant measure. We obtain an explicit formula for the entropy that only depends on the perimeter of the $(8g-4)$-sided fundamental polygon of the surface S and its genus. Using this, we analyze how the entropy changes in the Teichmüller space of S and prove the following flexibility result: the measure-theoretic entropy takes all values between 0 and a maximum that is achieved on the surface that admits a regular $(8g-4)$-sided fundamental polygon. We also compare the measure-theoretic entropy to the topological entropy of these maps and show that the smooth invariant measure is not a measure of maximal entropy.

We construct an example of a Hamiltonian flow $f^t$ on a four-dimensional smooth manifold $\mathcal {M}$ which after being restricted to an energy surface $\mathcal {M}_e$ demonstrates essential coexistence of regular and chaotic dynamics, that is, there is an open and dense $f^t$-invariant subset $U\subset \mathcal {M}_e$ such that the restriction $f^t|U$ has non-zero Lyapunov exponents in all directions (except for the direction of the flow) and is a Bernoulli flow while, on the boundary $\partial U$, which has positive volume, all Lyapunov exponents of the system are zero.

We consider continuous cocycles arising from CMV and Jacobi matrices. Assuming that the Verblunsky and Jacobi coefficients arise from generalized skew-shifts, we prove that uniform hyperbolicity of the associated cocycles is $C^0$-dense. This implies that the associated CMV and Jacobi matrices have a Cantor spectrum for a generic continuous sampling map.

We show that the ergodic integrals for the horocycle flow on the two-torus associated by Giulietti and Liverani with an Anosov diffeomorphism either grow linearly or are bounded; in other words, there are no deviations. For this, we use the topological invariance of the Artin–Mazur zeta function to exclude resonances outside the open unit disc. Transfer operators acting on suitable spaces of anisotropic distributions and their Ruelle determinants are the key tools used in the proof. As a bonus, we show that for any $C^\infty $ Anosov diffeomorphism F on the two-torus, the correlations for the measure of maximal entropy and $C^\infty $ observables decay with a rate strictly smaller than $e^{-h_{\mathrm {top}}(F)}$. We compare our results with very recent related work of Forni.

Let G be a Lie group, let $\Gamma \subset G$ be a discrete subgroup, let $X=G/\Gamma $ and let f be an affine map from X to itself. We give conditions on a submanifold Z of X that guarantee that the set of points $x\in X$ with f-trajectories avoiding Z is hyperplane absolute winning (a property which implies full Hausdorff dimension and is stable under countable intersections). A similar result is proved for one-parameter actions on X. This has applications in constructing exceptional geodesics on locally symmetric spaces and in non-density of the set of values of certain functions at integer points.

We study projectional properties of Poisson cut-out sets E in non-Euclidean spaces. In the first Heisenbeg group \[\mathbb{H} = \mathbb{C} \times \mathbb{R}\], endowed with the Korányi metric, we show that the Hausdorff dimension of the vertical projection \[\pi (E)\] (projection along the center of \[\mathbb{H}\]) almost surely equals \[\min \{ 2,{\dim _\operatorname{H} }(E)\} \] and that \[\pi (E)\] has non-empty interior if \[{\dim _{\text{H}}}(E) > 2\]. As a corollary, this allows us to determine the Hausdorff dimension of E with respect to the Euclidean metric in terms of its Heisenberg Hausdorff dimension \[{\dim _{\text{H}}}(E)\].

We also study projections in the one-point compactification of the Heisenberg group, that is, the 3-sphere \[{{\text{S}}^3}\] endowed with the visual metric d obtained by identifying \[{{\text{S}}^3}\] with the boundary of the complex hyperbolic plane. In \[{{\text{S}}^3}\], we prove a projection result that holds simultaneously for all radial projections (projections along so called “chains”). This shows that the Poisson cut-outs in \[{{\text{S}}^3}\] satisfy a strong version of the Marstrand’s projection theorem, without any exceptional directions.

In this paper we study a Fermi–Ulam model where a pingpong ball bounces elastically against a periodically oscillating platform in a gravity field. We assume that the platform motion $f(t)$ is 1-periodic and piecewise $C^3$ with a singularity, $\dot {f}(0+)\ne \dot {f}(1-)$. If the second derivative $\ddot {f}(t)$ of the platform motion is either always positive or always less than $-g$, where g is the gravitational constant, then the escaping orbits constitute a null set and the system is recurrent. However, under these assumptions, escaping orbits co-exist with bounded orbits at arbitrarily high energy levels.

We associate a flow $\phi $ with a solution of the vortex equations on a closed oriented Riemannian 2-manifold $(M,g)$ of negative Euler characteristic and investigate its properties. We show that $\phi $ always admits a dominated splitting and identify special cases in which $\phi $ is Anosov. In particular, starting from holomorphic differentials of fractional degree, we produce novel examples of Anosov flows on suitable roots of the unit tangent bundle of $(M,g)$.

Let M be a closed n-dimensional smooth Riemannian manifold, and let X be a $C^1$-vector field of $M.$ Let $\gamma $ be a hyperbolic closed orbit of $X.$ In this paper, we show that X has the $C^1$-stably shadowing property on the chain component $C_X(\gamma )$ if and only if $C_X(\gamma )$ is the hyperbolic homoclinic class.

We consider continuous free semigroup actions generated by a family $(g_y)_{y \,\in \, Y}$ of continuous endomorphisms of a compact metric space $(X,d)$, subject to a random walk $\mathbb P_\nu =\nu ^{\mathbb N}$ defined on a shift space $Y^{\mathbb N}$, where $(Y, d_Y)$ is a compact metric space with finite upper box dimension and $\nu $ is a Borel probability measure on Y. With the aim of elucidating the impact of the random walk on the metric mean dimension, we prove a variational principle which relates the metric mean dimension of the semigroup action with the corresponding notions for the associated skew product and the shift map $\sigma $ on $Y^{\mathbb {N}}$, and compare them with the upper box dimension of Y. In particular, we obtain exact formulas whenever $\nu $ is homogeneous and has full support. We also discuss several examples to enlighten the roles of the homogeneity, of the support and of the upper box dimension of the measure $\nu $, and to test the scope of our results.

In this work, we treat subshifts, defined in terms of an alphabet $\mathcal {A}$ and (usually infinite) forbidden list $\mathcal {F}$, where the number of n-letter words in $\mathcal {F}$ has ‘slow growth rate’ in n. We show that such subshifts are well behaved in several ways; for instance, they are boundedly supermultiplicative in the sense of Baker and Ghenciu [Dynamical properties of S-gap shifts and other shift spaces. J. Math. Anal. Appl. 430(2) (2015), 633–647] and they have unique measures of maximal entropy with the K-property and which satisfy Gibbs bounds on large (measure-theoretically) sets. The main tool in our proofs is a more general result, which states that bounded supermultiplicativity and a sort of measure-theoretic specification property together imply uniqueness of the measure of maximum entropy and our Gibbs bounds. We also show that some well-known classes of subshifts can be treated by our results, including the symbolic codings of $x \mapsto \alpha + \beta x$ (the so-called $\alpha $-$\beta $ shifts of Hofbauer [Maximal measures for simple piecewise monotonic transformations. Z. Wahrsch. verw. Geb. 52(3) (1980), 289–300]) and the bounded density subshifts of Stanley [Bounded density shifts. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 33(6) (2013), 1891–1928].

We consider Hölder continuous cocycles over an accessible partially hyperbolic system with values in the group of diffeomorphisms of a compact manifold $\mathcal {M}$. We obtain several results for this setting. If a cocycle is bounded in $C^{1+\gamma }$, we show that it has a continuous invariant family of $\gamma $-Hölder Riemannian metrics on $\mathcal {M}$. We establish continuity of a measurable conjugacy between two cocycles assuming bunching or existence of holonomies for both and pre-compactness in $C^0$ for one of them. We give conditions for existence of a continuous conjugacy between two cocycles in terms of their cycle weights. We also study the relation between the conjugacy and holonomies of the cocycles. Our results give arbitrarily small loss of regularity of the conjugacy along the fiber compared to that of the holonomies and of the cocycle.

This survey describes the recent advances in the construction of Markov partitions for non-uniformly hyperbolic systems. One important feature of this development comes from a finer theory of non-uniformly hyperbolic systems, which we also describe. The Markov partition defines a symbolic extension that is finite-to-one and onto a non-uniformly hyperbolic locus, and this provides dynamical and statistical consequences such as estimates on the number of closed orbits and properties of equilibrium measures. The class of systems includes diffeomorphisms, flows, and maps with singularities.