Consider a three-dimensional partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism. It is proved that under some rigid hypothesis on the tangent bundle dynamics, the map is (modulo finite covers and iterates) an Anosov diffeomorphism, a (generalized) skew-product or the time-one map of an Anosov flow, thus recovering a well-known classification conjecture of the second author to this restricted setting.

We obtain large and moderate deviation estimates for both sequential and random compositions of intermittent maps. We also address the question of whether or not centering is necessary for the quenched central limit theorems obtained by Nicol, Török and Vaienti [Central limit theorems for sequential and random intermittent dynamical systems. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.38(3) (2018), 1127–1153] for random dynamical systems comprising intermittent maps. Using recent work of Abdelkader and Aimino [On the quenched central limit theorem for random dynamical systems. J. Phys. A 49(24) (2016), 244002] and Hella and Stenlund [Quenched normal approximation for random sequences of transformations. J. Stat. Phys.178(1) (2020), 1–37] we extend the results of Nicol, Török and Vaienti on quenched central limit theorems for centered observables over random compositions of intermittent maps: first by enlarging the parameter range over which the quenched central limit theorem holds; and second by showing that the variance in the quenched central limit theorem is almost surely constant (and the same as the variance of the annealed central limit theorem) and that centering is needed to obtain this quenched central limit theorem.

In this paper we study the conformal measures of a normal subgroup of a cocompact Fuchsian group. In particular, we relate the extremal conformal measures to the eigenmeasures of a suitable Ruelle operator. Using Ancona’s theorem, adapted to the Ruelle operator setting, we show that if the group of deck transformations G is hyperbolic then the extremal conformal measures and the hyperbolic boundary of G coincide. We then interpret these results in terms of the asymptotic behavior of cutting sequences of geodesics on a regular cover of a compact hyperbolic surface.

A twisted cocycle taking values on a Lie group G is a cocycle that is twisted by an automorphism of G in each step. In the case where G = GL(d, ℝ), we prove that if two Hölder continuous twisted cocycles satisfying the so-called fiber-bunching condition have the same periodic data then they are cohomologous.

Consider an intermittent map $f_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}:[0,1]\rightarrow [0,1]$ and a Hölder continuous potential $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}:[0,1]\rightarrow \mathbb{R}$. We show that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D719}$ is stochastic for $f_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$ if and only if the topological pressure $P(f_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D711})$ satisfies $P(f_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D711})-\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}(0)>0$. As a consequence, for each $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}>0$ sufficiently small, the set of Hölder continuous potentials of exponent $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$ that are not stochastic for $f_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D705}}$ has nonempty interior in the space of all such potentials.

We study Smale skew product endomorphisms (introduced in Mihailescu and Urbański [Skew product Smale endomorphisms over countable shifts of finite type. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. doi: 10.1017/etds.2019.31. Published online June 2019]) now over countable graph-directed Markov systems, and we prove the exact dimensionality of conditional measures in fibers, and then the global exact dimensionality of the equilibrium measure itself. Our results apply to large classes of systems and have many applications. They apply, for instance, to natural extensions of graph-directed Markov systems. Another application is to skew products over parabolic systems. We also give applications in ergodic number theory, for example to the continued fraction expansion, and the backward fraction expansion. In the end we obtain a general formula for the Hausdorff (and pointwise) dimension of equilibrium measures with respect to the induced maps of natural extensions ${\mathcal{T}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}$ of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$-maps $T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}$, for arbitrary $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}>1$.

We study fast approximation of integrals with respect to stationary probability measures associated to iterated function systems on the unit interval. We provide an algorithm for approximating the integrals under certain conditions on the iterated function system and on the function that is being integrated. We apply this technique to estimate Hausdorff moments, Wasserstein distances and Lyapunov exponents of stationary probability measures.

We prove effective equidistribution of primitive rational points and of primitive rational points defined by monomials along long horocycle orbits in products of the torus and the modular surface. This answers a question posed in joint work by the first and the last named author with Shahar Mozes and Uri Shapira. Under certain congruence conditions we prove the joint equidistribution of conjugate rational points in the 2-torus and the modular surface.

We consider dynamical systems $T:X\rightarrow X$ that are extensions of a factor $S:Y\rightarrow Y$ through a projection $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}:X\rightarrow Y$ with shrinking fibers, that is, such that $T$ is uniformly continuous along fibers $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}^{-1}(y)$ and the diameter of iterate images of fibers $T^{n}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}^{-1}(y))$ uniformly go to zero as $n\rightarrow \infty$. We prove that every $S$-invariant measure $\check{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}$ has a unique $T$-invariant lift $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$, and prove that many properties of $\check{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}$ lift to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$: ergodicity, weak and strong mixing, decay of correlations and statistical properties (possibly with weakening in the rates). The basic tool is a variation of the Wasserstein distance, obtained by constraining the optimal transportation paradigm to displacements along the fibers. We extend classical arguments to a general setting, enabling us to translate potentials and observables back and forth between $X$ and $Y$.

We consider here a certain class of groupoids obtained via an equivalence relation (the so-called subgroupoids of pair groupoids). We generalize to Haar systems in these groupoids some results related to entropy and pressure which are well known in thermodynamic formalism. We introduce a transfer operator, where the equivalence relation (which defines the groupoid) plays the role of the dynamics and the corresponding transverse function plays the role of the a priori probability. We also introduce the concept of invariant transverse probability and of entropy for an invariant transverse probability, as well as of pressure for transverse functions. Moreover, we explore the relation between quasi-invariant probabilities and transverse measures. Some of the general results presented here are not for continuous modular functions but for the more general class of measurable modular functions.

We study the thermodynamic formalism of a $C^{\infty }$ non-uniformly hyperbolic diffeomorphism on the 2-torus, known as the Katok map. We prove for a Hölder continuous potential with one additional condition, or geometric $t$-potential $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}_{t}$ with $t<1$, the equilibrium state exists and is unique. We derive the level-2 large deviation principle for the equilibrium state of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D711}_{t}$. We study the multifractal spectra of the Katok map for the entropy and dimension of level sets of Lyapunov exponents.

We consider multimodal maps with holes and study the evolution of the open systems with respect to equilibrium states for both geometric and Hölder potentials. For small holes, we show that a large class of initial distributions share the same escape rate and converge to a unique absolutely continuous conditionally invariant measure; we also prove a variational principle connecting the escape rate to the pressure on the survivor set, with no conditions on the placement of the hole. Finally, introducing a weak condition on the centre of the hole, we prove scaling limits for the escape rate for holes centred at both periodic and non-periodic points, as the diameter of the hole goes to zero.

In L. W. Flinn’s PhD thesis published in 1972, the author conjectured that weakly expansive flows are also expansive flows. In this paper we use the horocycle flow on compact Riemann surfaces of constant negative curvature to show that Flinn’s conjecture is not true.

We consider a certain two-parameter family of automorphisms of the affine plane over a complete, locally compact non-Archimedean field. Each of these automorphisms admits a chaotic attractor on which it is topologically conjugate to a full two-sided shift map, and the attractor supports a unit Borel measure which describes the distribution of the forward orbit of Haar-almost all points in the basin of attraction. We also compute the Hausdorff dimension of the attractor, which is non-integral.

The Chirikov standard map is a prototypical example of a one-parameter family of volume-preserving maps for which one anticipates chaotic behavior on a non-negligible (positive-volume) subset of phase space for a large set of parameters. Rigorous analysis is notoriously difficult and it remains an open question whether this chaotic region, the stochastic sea, has positive Lebesgue measure for any parameter value. Here we study a problem of intermediate difficulty: compositions of standard maps with increasing coefficient. When the coefficients increase to infinity at a sufficiently fast polynomial rate, we obtain a strong law, a central limit theorem, and quantitative mixing estimates for Holder observables. The methods used are not specific to the standard map and apply to a class of compositions of ‘prototypical’ two-dimensional maps with hyperbolicity on ‘most’ of phase space.

For non-invertible dynamical systems, we investigate how ‘non-invertible’ a system is and how the ‘non-invertibility’ contributes to the entropy from different viewpoints. For a continuous map on a compact metric space, we propose a notion of pointwise metric preimage entropy for invariant measures. For systems with uniform separation of preimages, we establish a variational principle between this version of pointwise metric preimage entropy and pointwise topological entropies introduced by Hurley [On topological entropy of maps. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.15 (1995), 557–568], which answers a question considered by Cheng and Newhouse [Pre-image entropy. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.25 (2005), 1091–1113]. Under the same condition, the notion coincides with folding entropy introduced by Ruelle [Positivity of entropy production in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics. J. Stat. Phys.85(1–2) (1996), 1–23]. For a $C^{1}$-partially hyperbolic (non-invertible and non-degenerate) endomorphism on a closed manifold, we introduce notions of stable topological and metric entropies, and establish a variational principle relating them. For $C^{2}$ systems, the stable metric entropy is expressed in terms of folding entropy (namely, pointwise metric preimage entropy) and negative Lyapunov exponents. Preimage entropy could be regarded as a special type of stable entropy when each stable manifold consists of a single point. Moreover, we also consider the upper semi-continuity for both of pointwise metric preimage entropy and stable entropy and give a version of the Shannon–McMillan–Breiman theorem for them.

We construct an example of a fixed point free Anosov diffeomorphism of the plane, which is not topologically conjugate to a translation.

J.-C. Yoccoz proposed a natural extension of Selberg’s eigenvalue conjecture to moduli spaces of abelian differentials. We prove an approximation to this conjecture. This gives a qualitative generalization of Selberg’s $\frac{3}{16}$ theorem to moduli spaces of abelian differentials on surfaces of genus ${\geqslant}2$.

We show that various classes of products of manifolds do not support transitive Anosov diffeomorphisms. Exploiting the Ruelle–Sullivan cohomology class, we prove that the product of a negatively curved manifold with a rational homology sphere does not support transitive Anosov diffeomorphisms. We extend this result to products of finitely many negatively curved manifolds of dimension at least three with a rational homology sphere that has vanishing simplicial volume. As an application of this study, we obtain new examples of manifolds that do not support transitive Anosov diffeomorphisms, including certain manifolds with non-trivial higher homotopy groups and certain products of aspherical manifolds.

This paper establishes a fundamental difference between $\mathbb{Z}$ subshifts of finite type and $\mathbb{Z}^{2}$ subshifts of finite type in the context of ergodic optimization. Specifically, we consider a subshift of finite type $X$ as a subset of a full shift $F$. We then introduce a natural penalty function $f$, defined on $F$, which is 0 if the local configuration near the origin is legal and $-1$ otherwise. We show that in the case of $\mathbb{Z}$ subshifts, for all sufficiently small perturbations, $g$, of $f$, the $g$-maximizing invariant probability measures are supported on $X$ (that is, the set $X$ is stably maximized by $f$). However, in the two-dimensional case, we show that the well-known Robinson tiling fails to have this property: there exist arbitrarily small perturbations, $g$, of $f$ for which the $g$-maximizing invariant probability measures are supported on $F\setminus X$.