In this paper we consider two piecewise Riemannian metrics defined on the Culler–Vogtmann outer space which we call the entropy metric and the pressure metric. As a result of work of McMullen, these metrics can be seen as analogs of the Weil–Petersson metric on the Teichmüller space of a closed surface. We show that while the geometric analysis of these metrics is similar to that of the Weil–Petersson metric, from the point of view of geometric group theory, these metrics behave very differently than the Weil–Petersson metric. Specifically, we show that when the rank r is at least 4, the action of $\operatorname {\mathrm {Out}}(\mathbb {F}_r)$ on the completion of the Culler–Vogtmann outer space using the entropy metric has a fixed point. A similar statement also holds for the pressure metric.

The two main results in this paper concern the regularity of the invariant foliation of a $C^0$-integrable symplectic twist diffeomorphism of the two-dimensional annulus, namely that (i) the generating function of such a foliation is $C^1$, and (ii) the foliation is Hölder with exponent $\tfrac 12$. We also characterize foliations by graphs that are straightenable via a symplectic homeomorphism and prove that every symplectic homeomorphism that leaves invariant all the leaves of a straightenable foliation has Arnol’d–Liouville coordinates, in which the dynamics restricted to the leaves is conjugate to a rotation. We deduce that every Lipschitz integrable symplectic twist diffeomorphisms of the two-dimensional annulus has Arnol’d–Liouville coordinates and then provide examples of ‘strange’ Lipschitz foliations by smooth curves that cannot be straightened by a symplectic homeomorphism and cannot be invariant by a symplectic twist diffeomorphism.

We generalize the greedy and lazy $\beta $-transformations for a real base $\beta $ to the setting of alternate bases ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}=(\beta _0,\ldots ,\beta _{p-1})$, which were recently introduced by the first and second authors as a particular case of Cantor bases. As in the real base case, these new transformations, denoted $T_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ and $L_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ respectively, can be iterated in order to generate the digits of the greedy and lazy ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}$-expansions of real numbers. The aim of this paper is to describe the measure-theoretical dynamical behaviors of $T_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ and $L_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$. We first prove the existence of a unique absolutely continuous (with respect to an extended Lebesgue measure, called the p-Lebesgue measure) $T_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$-invariant measure. We then show that this unique measure is in fact equivalent to the p-Lebesgue measure and that the corresponding dynamical system is ergodic and has entropy $({1}/{p})\log (\beta _{p-1}\cdots \beta _0)$. We give an explicit expression of the density function of this invariant measure and compute the frequencies of letters in the greedy ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}$-expansions. The dynamical properties of $L_{{\boldsymbol {\beta }}}$ are obtained by showing that the lazy dynamical system is isomorphic to the greedy one. We also provide an isomorphism with a suitable extension of the $\beta $-shift. Finally, we show that the ${\boldsymbol {\beta }}$-expansions can be seen as $(\beta _{p-1}\cdots \beta _0)$-representations over general digit sets and we compare both frameworks.

We show that a piecewise monotonic map with positive topological entropy satisfies the level-2 large deviation principle with respect to the unique measure of maximal entropy under the conditions that the corresponding Markov diagram is irreducible and that the periodic measures of the map are dense in the set of ergodic measures. This result can apply to a broad class of piecewise monotonic maps, such as monotonic mod one transformations and piecewise monotonic maps with two monotonic pieces.

Kingman’s subadditive ergodic theorem is traditionally proved in the setting of a measure-preserving invertible transformation T of a measure space $(X, \mu )$. We use a theorem of Silva and Thieullen to extend the theorem to the setting of a not necessarily invertible transformation, which is non-singular under the assumption that $\mu $ and $\mu \circ T$ have the same null sets. Using this, we are able to produce versions of the Furstenberg–Kesten theorem and the Oseledeč ergodic theorem for products of random matrices without the assumption that the transformation is either invertible or measure-preserving.

Recall that two geodesics in a negatively curved surface S are of the same type if their free homotopy classes differ by a homeomorphism of the surface. In this note we study the distribution in the unit tangent bundle of the geodesics of fixed type, proving that they are asymptotically equidistributed with respect to a certain measure ${\mathfrak {m}}^S$ on $T^1S$. We study a few properties of this measure, showing for example that it distinguishes between hyperbolic surfaces.

We prove that if two topologically free and entropy regular actions of countable sofic groups on compact metrizable spaces are continuously orbit equivalent, and each group either (i) contains a w-normal amenable subgroup which is neither locally finite nor virtually cyclic, or (ii) is a non-locally-finite product of two infinite groups, then the actions have the same sofic topological entropy. This fact is then used to show that if two free uniquely ergodic and entropy regular probability-measure-preserving actions of such groups are boundedly orbit equivalent then the actions have the same sofic measure entropy. Our arguments are based on a relativization of property SC to sofic approximations and yield more general entropy inequalities.

We study approximation schemes for shift spaces over a finite alphabet using (pseudo)metrics connected to Ornstein’s ${\bar d}$ metric. This leads to a class of shift spaces we call ${\bar d}$-approachable. A shift space is ${\bar d}$-approachable when its canonical sequence of Markov approximations converges to it also in the ${\bar d}$ sense. We give a topological characterization of chain-mixing ${\bar d}$-approachable shift spaces. As an application we provide a new criterion for entropy density of ergodic measures. Entropy density of a shift space means that every invariant measure $\mu $ of such a shift space is the weak$^*$ limit of a sequence $\mu _n$ of ergodic measures with the corresponding sequence of entropies $h(\mu _n)$ converging to $h(\mu )$. We prove ergodic measures are entropy-dense for every shift space that can be approximated in the ${\bar d}$ pseudometric by a sequence of transitive sofic shifts. This criterion can be applied to many examples that were beyond the reach of previously known techniques including hereditary $\mathscr {B}$-free shifts and some minimal or proximal systems. The class of symbolic dynamical systems covered by our results includes also shift spaces where entropy density was established previously using the (almost) specification property.

We obtain quenched almost sure invariance principles (with convergence rates) for random Young towers if the average measure of the tail of return times to the base of random towers decays sufficiently fast. We apply our results to some independent and identically distributed perturbations of some non-uniformly expanding maps. These imply that the random systems under study tend to a Brownian motion under various scalings.

Motivated by fractal geometry of self-affine carpets and sponges, Feng and Huang [J. Math. Pures Appl. 106(9) (2016), 411–452] introduced weighted topological entropy and pressure for factor maps between dynamical systems, and proved variational principles for them. We introduce a new approach to this theory. Our new definitions of weighted topological entropy and pressure are very different from the original definitions of Feng and Huang. The equivalence of the two definitions seems highly non-trivial. Their equivalence can be seen as a generalization of the dimension formula for the Bedford–McMullen carpet in purely topological terms.

In this paper, we study the dynamics of the Newton maps for arbitrary polynomials. Let p be an arbitrary polynomial with at least three distinct roots, and f be its Newton map. It is shown that the boundary $\partial B$ of any immediate root basin B of f is locally connected. Moreover, $\partial B$ is a Jordan curve if and only if $\mathrm {deg}(f|_B)=2$. This implies that the boundaries of all components of root basins, for the Newton maps for all polynomials, from the viewpoint of topology, are tame.