The Bowen-Margulis measure on the unit tangent bundle of the universal covering of a compact manifold of negative curvature is determined by its restriction to the leaves of the strong unstable foliation. We describe this restriction to any strong unstable manifold W as a spherical measure with respect to a natural distance on W.

In this paper we consider the family of rational maps of the complex plane given by \[z^2+\frac{\lambda}{z^2}\] where $\lambda$ is a complex parameter. We regard this family as a singular perturbation of the simple function $z^2$. We show that, in any neighborhood of the origin in the parameter plane, there are infinitely many open sets of parameters for which the Julia sets of the corresponding maps are Sierpinski curves. Hence all of these Julia sets are homeomorphic. However, we also show that parameters corresponding to different open sets have dynamics that are not conjugate.

It is shown that systems with hyperbolic structure have the Bernoulli property. Some new results on smooth cross-sections of hyperbolic Bernoulli flows are also derived. The proofs involve an abstract version of our original methods for showing that the geodesic flow on surfaces of negative curvature are Bernoulli.

Let f be an orientation preserving ℋ-diffeomorphism of the circle. If the rotation number α = ρ(f) is irrational and log Df is of bounded variation then, by a wellknown theorem of Denjoy, f is conjugate to the rigid rotation Rα. The conjugation means that there exists an essentially unique homeomorphism h of the circle such that f = h−lRαh. The general problem of relating the smoothness of h to that of f under suitable diophantine conditions on α has been studied extensively (cf. [H1], [KO], [Y] and the references given there). At the bottom of the scale of smoothness for f there is a theorem of M. Herman [H2] which states that if Df is absolutely continuous and D log Df ∈ Lp, p > 1, α = ρ (f) is of ‘constant type’ which means ‘the coefficients in the continued fraction expansion of α are bounded’, and if f is a perturbation of Rα, then h is absolutely continuous. Our purpose in this paper is to give a different proof and an improved version of Herman's theorem. The main difference in the result is that we do not need to assume that f is close to Rα; the proof is very different from Herman's and is very much in the spirit of [KO].

A partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism is dynamically coherent if its center, center-stable and center-unstable invariant distributions are integrable, i.e. tangent to foliations. Dynamical coherence is a key assumption in the theory of stable ergodicity. The main result: a partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism f\colon M\to M is dynamically coherent if the strong stable and unstable foliations are quasi-isometric in the universal cover \widetilde{M}, i.e. for any two points in the same leaf, the distance between them in \widetilde{M} is bounded from below by a linear function of the distance along the leaf.

A distortion theory is developed for S-unimodal maps. It will be used to get some geometric understanding of invariant Cantor sets. In particular attracting Cantor sets turn out to have Lebesgue measure zero. Furthermore the ergodic behavior of S-unimodal maps is classified according to a distortion property, called the Markov-property.

We consider transitive Anosov flows φ: M → M and give necessary and sufficient conditions for every homology class in H1(M,ℤ) to contain a closed φ-orbit. Under these conditions, we derive an asymptotic formula for the number of closed φ-orbits in a fixed homology class, generalizing a result of Katsuda and Sunada.

We deal with all the mappings $f_\lambda(z)=\lambda e^z$ that have an attracting periodic orbit. We consider the set $J_r(f_\lambda)$ consisting of those points of the Julia set of $f_\lambda$ that do not escape to infinity under positive iterates of $f_\lambda$. Our ultimate result is that the function $\lambda\mapsto{\rm HD}(J_r(f_\lambda))$ is real-analytic. In order to prove it we develop the thermodynamic formalism of potentials of the form $-t\log|F_\lambda'|$, where $F_\lambda$ is the natural map associated with $f_\lambda$ closely related to the corresponding map introduced in Urbański and Zdunik (2001). The formalism includes appropriately defined topological pressure, Perron–Frobenius operators, and geometric and invariant generalized conformal measures (Gibbs states). We show that our Perron–Frobenius operators are quasicompact and that they embed into a family of operators depending holomorphically on an appropriate parameter, and we obtain several other properties of these operators. We prove an appropriate version of Bowen's formula that the Hausdorff dimension of the set $J_r(f_\lambda)$ is equal to the unique zero of the pressure function. Since the formula for the topological pressure is independent of the set Jr(f), Bowen's formula also indicates that Jr(f) is the right set to deal with. We also study in detail the properties of quasiconformal conjugacies between the maps $f_\lambda$. As a byproduct of our main course of reasoning we prove stochastic properties of the dynamical system generated by $F_\lambda$ and the invariant Gibbs states $\mu_t$ such as the Central Limit Theorem and exponential decay of correlations.

We define and study new invariants called pre-image entropies which are similar to the standard notions of topological and measure-theoretic entropies. These new invariants are only non-zero for non-invertible maps, and they give a quantitative measurement of how far a given map is from being invertible. We obtain analogs of many known results for topological and measure-theoretic entropies. In particular, we obtain product rules, power rules, analogs of the Shannon–Breiman–McMillan theorem, and a variational principle.

We prove several new results about AF-equivalence relations and relate these to Cantor minimal systems (i.e. to minimal Z-actions). The results we obtain turn out to be crucial for the study of the topological orbit structure of more general countable group actions (as homeomorphisms) on Cantor sets, which will be the topic of a forthcoming paper. In all this, Bratteli diagrams and their dynamical interpretation are indispensable tools.

In previous work, the author introduced a measure-conjugacy invariant for sofic group actions called sofic entropy. Here, it is proven that the sofic entropy of an amenable group action equals its classical entropy. The proof uses a new measure-conjugacy invariant called upper-sofic entropy and a theorem of Rudolph and Weiss for the entropy of orbit-equivalent actions relative to the orbit change σ-algebra.

Let R be a Borel equivalence relation with countable equivalence classes on a measure space M. Intuitively, a ‘treeing’ of R is a measurably-varying way of makin each equivalence class into the vertices of a tree. We make this definition rigorous. We prove that if each equivalence class becomes a tree with polynomial growth, then the equivalence relation is amenable. We prove that if the equivalence relation is finite measure-preserving and amenable, then almost every tree (i.e., equivalence class) must have one or two ends.

For a homeomorphism of a compact metrizable space X, we show that the property that every point of X is pseudo-non-wandering (see definition 2) is equivalent to the possibility of embedding the corresponding transformation group C*-algebra into an AF-algebra.

We show that a smooth compact Riemannian manifold of dimension greater than or equal to 2 admits a Bernoulli diffeomorphism with non-zero Lyapunov exponents.

We study dynamical systems acting on the path space of a stationary (non-simple) Bratteli diagram. For such systems we give an explicit description of all ergodic probability measures that are invariant with respect to the tail equivalence relation (or the Vershik map); these measures are completely described by the incidence matrix of the Bratteli diagram. Since such diagrams correspond to substitution dynamical systems, our description provides an algorithm for finding invariant probability measures for aperiodic non-minimal substitution systems. Several corollaries of these results are obtained. In particular, we show that the invariant measures are not mixing and give a criterion for a complex number to be an eigenvalue for the Vershik map.

It is shown that the system of the form x + V′ (x) = p (t) with periodic V and p and with (p) = 0 is near-integrable for large energies. In particular, most (in the sense of Lebesgue measure) fast solutions are quasiperiodic, provided V ∈ C(5) and p ∈ L1; furthermore, for any solution x(t) there exists a velocity bound c for all time: |x(t)| < c for all t ∈ R. For any real number r there exists a solution with that average velocity, and when r is rational, this solution can be chosen to be periodic.

Kupka-Smale like theorems are proven in the real analytic case, using existing perturbation schemes for the smooth case and the heat operator. As a consequence, a topological proof is obtained of Siegel's theorem on the generic divergence of normal form transformations.

We prove that the crossed product of the CAR algebra M2∞ by the shift is an inductive limit of homogeneous algebras over the circle with fibres full matrix algebras. As a consequence the crossed product has real rank zero, and where is the Cuntz algebra of order 2.

We prove an entropy formula for certain expansive actions of a countable discrete residually finite group $\Gamma$ by automorphisms of compact abelian groups in terms of Fuglede–Kadison determinants. This extends an earlier result proved by the first author under somewhat more restrictive conditions. The main tools for this generalization are a representation of the $\Gamma$-action by means of a ‘fundamental homoclinic point’ and the description of entropy in terms of the renormalized logarithmic growth rate of the set of $\Gamma_n$-fixed points, where $(\Gamma_n,n\ge1)$ is a decreasing sequence of finite index normal subgroups of $\Gamma$ with trivial intersection.

We study a skew product with a curve of neutral points. We show that there exists a unique absolutely continuous invariant probability measure, and that the Birkhoff averages of a sufficiently smooth observable converge to a normal law or a stable law, depending on the average of the observable along the neutral curve.