Entropy of measure-preserving or continuous actions of amenable discrete groups allows for various equivalent approaches. Among them are those given by the techniques developed by Ollagnier and Pinchon on the one hand and the Ornstein–Weiss lemma on the other. We extend these two approaches to the context of actions of amenable topological groups. In contrast to the discrete setting, our results reveal a remarkable difference between the two concepts of entropy in the realm of non-discrete groups: while the first quantity collapses to 0 in the non-discrete case, the second yields a well-behaved invariant for amenable unimodular groups. Concerning the latter, we moreover study the corresponding notion of topological pressure, prove a Goodwyn-type theorem, and establish the equivalence with the uniform lattice approach (for locally compact groups admitting a uniform lattice). Our study elaborates on a version of the Ornstein–Weiss lemma due to Gromov.

In this paper, we study random walks on groups that contain superlinear-divergent geodesics, in the line of thoughts of Goldsborough and Sisto. The existence of a superlinear-divergent geodesic is a quasi-isometry invariant which allows us to execute Gouëzel’s pivoting technique. We develop the theory of superlinear divergence and establish a central limit theorem for random walks on these groups.

We study a skew product transformation associated to an irrational rotation of the circle $[0,1]/\sim $. This skew product keeps track of the number of times an orbit of the rotation lands in the two complementary intervals of $\{0,1/2\}$ in the circle. We show that under certain conditions on the continued fraction expansion of the irrational number defining the rotation, the skew product transformation has certain dense orbits. This is in spite of the presence of numerous non-dense orbits. We use this to construct laminations on infinite type surfaces with exotic properties. In particular, we show that for every infinite type surface with an isolated planar end, there is an infinite clique of $2$-filling rays based at that end. These $2$-filling rays are relevant to Bavard and Walker’s loop graphs.

Anosov automorphisms with Jordan blocks are not periodic data rigid. We introduce a refinement of the periodic data and show that this refined periodic data characterizes $C^{1+}$ conjugacy for Anosov automorphisms on $\mathbb {T}^4$ with a Jordan block.

We prove several results concerning the existence of surfaces of section for the geodesic flows of closed orientable Riemannian surfaces. The surfaces of section $\Sigma $ that we construct are either Birkhoff sections, which means that they intersect every sufficiently long orbit segment of the geodesic flow, or at least they have some hyperbolic components in $\partial \Sigma $ as limit sets of the orbits of the geodesic flow that do not return to $\Sigma $. In order to prove these theorems, we provide a study of configurations of simple closed geodesics of closed orientable Riemannian surfaces, which may have independent interest. Our arguments are based on the curve shortening flow.

We study the exact Hausdorff and packing dimensions of the prime Cantor set, $\Lambda _P$, which comprises the irrationals whose continued fraction entries are prime numbers. We prove that the Hausdorff measure of the prime Cantor set cannot be finite and positive with respect to any sufficiently regular dimension function, thus negatively answering a question of Mauldin and Urbański (1999) and Mauldin (2013) for this class of dimension functions. By contrast, under a reasonable number-theoretic conjecture we prove that the packing measure of the conformal measure on the prime Cantor set is in fact positive and finite with respect to the dimension function $\psi (r) = r^\delta \log ^{-2\delta }\log (1/r)$, where $\delta $ is the dimension (conformal, Hausdorff, and packing) of the prime Cantor set.

Let $f(z)=z^2+c$ be an infinitely renormalizable quadratic polynomial and $J_\infty $ be the intersection of forward orbits of ‘small’ Julia sets of its simple renormalizations. We prove that if f admits an infinite sequence of satellite renormalizations, then every invariant measure of $f: J_\infty \to J_\infty $ is supported on the postcritical set and has zero Lyapunov exponent. Coupled with [13], this implies that the Lyapunov exponent of such f at c is equal to zero, which partly answers a question posed by Weixiao Shen.

Let $f,g$ be $C^2$ expanding maps on the circle which are topologically conjugate. We assume that the derivatives of f and g at corresponding periodic points coincide for some large period N. We show that f and g are ‘approximately smoothly conjugate.’ Namely, we construct a $C^2$ conjugacy $h_N$ such that $h_N$ is exponentially close to h in the $C^0$ topology, and $f_N:=h_N^{-1}gh_N$ is exponentially close to f in the $C^1$ topology. Our main tool is a uniform effective version of Bowen’s equidistribution of weighted periodic orbits to the equilibrium state.

We prove an effective estimate with a power saving error term for the number of square-tiled surfaces in a connected component of a stratum of quadratic differentials whose vertical and horizontal foliations belong to prescribed mapping class group orbits and which have at most L squares. This result strengthens asymptotic counting formulas in the work of Delecroix, Goujard, Zograf, Zorich, and the author.

For $E \subset \mathbb {N}$, a subset $R \subset \mathbb {N}$ is E-intersective if for every $A \subset E$ having positive relative density, $R \cap (A - A) \neq \varnothing $. We say that R is chromatically E-intersective if for every finite partition $E=\bigcup _{i=1}^k E_i$, there exists i such that $R\cap (E_i-E_i)\neq \varnothing $. When $E=\mathbb {N}$, we recover the usual notions of intersectivity and chromatic intersectivity. We investigate to what extent the known intersectivity results hold in the relative setting when $E = \mathbb {P}$, the set of primes, or other sparse subsets of $\mathbb {N}$. Among other things, we prove the following: (1) the set of shifted Chen primes $\mathbb {P}_{\mathrm {Chen}} + 1$ is both intersective and $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (2) there exists an intersective set that is not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective; (3) every $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set is intersective; (4) there exists a chromatically $\mathbb {P}$-intersective set which is not intersective (and therefore not $\mathbb {P}$-intersective).

We study piecewise injective, but not necessarily globally injective, contracting maps on a compact subset of ${\mathbb R}^d$. We prove that, generically, the attractor and the set of discontinuities of such a map are disjoint, and hence the attractor consists of periodic orbits. In addition, we prove that piecewise injective contractions are generically topologically stable.

The possibilities for limit functions on a Fatou component for the iteration of a single polynomial or rational function are well understood and quite restricted. In non-autonomous iteration, where one considers compositions of arbitrary polynomials with suitably bounded degrees and coefficients, one should observe a far greater range of behavior. We show this is indeed the case and we exhibit a bounded sequence of quadratic polynomials which has a bounded Fatou component on which one obtains as limit functions every member of the classical Schlicht family of normalized univalent functions on the unit disc. The proof is based on quasiconformal surgery and the use of high iterates of a quadratic polynomial with a Siegel disc which closely approximate the identity on compact subsets. Careful bookkeeping using the hyperbolic metric is required to control the errors in approximating the desired limit functions and ensure that these errors ultimately tend to zero.

Due to a result by Glasner and Downarowicz [Isomorphic extensions and applications. Topol. Methods Nonlinear Anal. 48(1) (2016), 321–338], it is known that a minimal system is mean equicontinuous if and only if it is an isomorphic extension of its maximal equicontinuous factor. The majority of known examples of this type are almost automorphic, that is, the factor map to the maximal equicontinuous factor is almost one-to-one. The only cases of isomorphic extensions which are not almost automorphic are again due to Glasner and Downarowicz, who in the same article provide a construction of such systems in a rather general topological setting. Here, we use the Anosov–Katok method to provide an alternative route to such examples and to show that these may be realized as smooth skew product diffeomorphisms of the two-torus with an irrational rotation on the base. Moreover – and more importantly – a modification of the construction allows to ensure that lifts of these diffeomorphisms to finite covering spaces provide novel examples of finite-to-one topomorphic extensions of irrational rotations. These are still strictly ergodic and share the same dynamical eigenvalues as the original system, but show an additional singular continuous component of the dynamical spectrum.

Let A be a rational function of one complex variable of degree at least two, and $z_0$ its repelling fixed point with the multiplier $\unicode{x3bb} .$ A Poincaré function associated with $z_0$ is a function meromorphic on ${\mathbb C}$ such that , and In this paper, we study the following problem: given Poincaré functions and , find out if there is an algebraic relation between them and, if such a relation exists, describe the corresponding algebraic curve $f(x,y)=0.$ We provide a solution, which can be viewed as a refinement of the classical theorem of Ritt about commuting rational functions. We also reprove and extend previous results concerning algebraic dependencies between Böttcher functions.

In this paper, we prove a cocycle version of marked length spectrum rigidity. There are two consequences: the first one is marked length pattern rigidity for arithmetic hyperbolic locally symmetric manifolds, and the second one is a strengthened marked length spectrum rigidity for surfaces and closed locally symmetric manifolds.

We study actions of higher rank lattices $\Gamma <G$ on hyperbolic spaces and we show that all such actions satisfying mild properties come from the rank-one factors of G. In particular, all non-elementary isometric actions on an unbounded hyperbolic space are of this type.

We study the dynamics of dissipative billiard maps within planar convex domains. Such maps have a global attractor. We are interested in the topological and dynamical complexity of the attractor, in terms both of the geometry of the billiard table and of the strength of the dissipation. We focus on the study of an invariant subset of the attractor, the so-called Birkhoff attractor. On the one hand, we show that for a generic convex table with ‘pinched’ curvature, the Birkhoff attractor is a normally contracted manifold when the dissipation is strong. On the other hand, for a mild dissipation, we prove that, generically, the Birkhoff attractor is complicated, both from the topological and the dynamical points of view.

We prove that the existence of one horosphere in the universal cover of a closed Riemannian manifold of dimension $n \geq 3$ with strongly $1/4$-pinched or relatively $1/2$-pinched sectional curvature, on which the stable holonomy along one horosphere coincides with the Riemannian parallel transport, implies that the manifold is homothetic to a real hyperbolic manifold.

Let G be a connected semisimple real algebraic group. For a Zariski dense Anosov subgroup $\Gamma <G$ with respect to a parabolic subgroup $P_\theta $, we prove that any $\Gamma $-Patterson–Sullivan measure charges no mass on any proper subvariety of $G/P_\theta $. More generally, we prove that for a Zariski dense $\theta $-transverse subgroup $\Gamma <G$, any $(\Gamma , \psi )$-Patterson–Sullivan measure charges no mass on any proper subvariety of $G/P_\theta $, provided the $\psi $-Poincaré series of $\Gamma $ diverges at its abscissa of convergence. In particular, our result also applies to relatively Anosov subgroups.

This paper studies various aspects of inverse limits of locally expanding affine linear maps on flat branched manifolds, which I call flat Wieler solenoids. Among the aspects studied are different types of cohomologies, the rates of mixing given by the Ruelle spectrum of the hyperbolic map acting on this space, and solutions of the cohomological equation in primitive substitution subshifts for Hölder functions. The overarching theme is that considerations of $\alpha $-Hölder regularity on Cantor sets go a long way.