In this paper, we study transitivity of partially hyperbolic endomorphisms of the two torus whose action in the first homology group has two integer eigenvalues of moduli greater than one. We prove that if the Jacobian is everywhere greater than the modulus of the largest eigenvalue, then the map is robustly transitive. For this, we introduce Blichfedt’s theorem as a tool for extracting dynamical information from the action of a map in homology. We also treat the case of specially partially hyperbolic endomorphisms, for which we obtain a complete dichotomy: either the map is transitive and conjugated to its linear part, or its unstable foliation must contain an annulus which may either be wandering or periodic.

Two asymptotic configurations on a full $\mathbb {Z}^d$-shift are indistinguishable if, for every finite pattern, the associated sets of occurrences in each configuration coincide up to a finitely supported permutation of $\mathbb {Z}^d$. We prove that indistinguishable asymptotic pairs satisfying a ‘flip condition’ are characterized by their pattern complexity on finite connected supports. Furthermore, we prove that uniformly recurrent indistinguishable asymptotic pairs satisfying the flip condition are described by codimension-one (dimension of the internal space) cut and project schemes, which symbolically correspond to multidimensional Sturmian configurations. Together, the two results provide a generalization to $\mathbb {Z}^d$ of the characterization of Sturmian sequences by their factor complexity $n+1$. Many open questions are raised by the current work and are listed in the introduction.

We study shift spaces over a finite alphabet that can be approximated by mixing shifts of finite type in the sense of (pseudo)metrics connected to Ornstein’s $\bar {d}$ metric ($\bar {d}$-approachable shift spaces). The class of $\bar {d}$-approachable shifts can be considered as a topological analog of measure-theoretical Bernoulli systems. The notion of $\bar {d}$-approachability, together with a closely connected notion of $\bar {d}$-shadowing, was introduced by Konieczny, Kupsa, and Kwietniak [Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 43(3) (2023), 943–970]. These notions were developed with the aim of significantly generalizing specification properties. Indeed, many popular variants of the specification property, including the classic one and the almost/weak specification property, ensure $\bar {d}$-approachability and $\bar {d}$-shadowing. Here, we study further properties and connections between $\bar {d}$-shadowing and $\bar {d}$-approachability. We prove that $\bar {d}$-shadowing implies $\bar {d}$-stability (a notion recently introduced by Tim Austin). We show that for surjective shift spaces with the $\bar {d}$-shadowing property the Hausdorff pseudodistance ${\bar d}^{\mathrm {H}}$ between shift spaces induced by $\bar {d}$ is the same as the Hausdorff distance between their simplices of invariant measures with respect to the Hausdorff distance induced by Ornstein’s metric $\bar {d}$ between measures. We prove that without $\bar {d}$-shadowing this need not to be true (it is known that the former distance always bounds the latter). We provide examples illustrating these results, including minimal examples and proximal examples of shift spaces with the $\bar {d}$-shadowing property. The existence of such shift spaces was announced in the earlier paper mentioned above. It shows that $\bar {d}$-shadowing indeed generalizes the specification property.

Given a two-sided shift space on a finite alphabet and a continuous potential function, we give conditions under which an equilibrium measure can be described using a construction analogous to Hausdorff measure that goes back to the work of Bowen. This construction was previously applied to smooth uniformly and partially hyperbolic systems by the first author, Pesin, and Zelerowicz. Our results here apply to all subshifts of finite type and Hölder continuous potentials, but extend beyond this setting, and we also apply them to shift spaces with synchronizing words.

It is conjectured that the only integrable metrics on the two-dimensional torus are Liouville metrics. In this paper, we study a deformative version of this conjecture: we consider integrable deformations of a non-flat Liouville metric in a conformal class and show that for a fairly large class of such deformations, the deformed metric is again Liouville. The principal idea of the argument is that the preservation of rational invariant tori in the foliation of the phase space forces a linear combination on the Fourier coefficients of the deformation to vanish. Showing that the resulting linear system is non-degenerate will then yield the claim. Since our method of proof immediately carries over to higher dimensional tori, we obtain analogous statements in this more general case. To put our results in perspective, we review existing results about integrable metrics on the torus.

The main theorem of this paper establishes a uniform syndeticity result concerning the multiple recurrence of measure-preserving actions on probability spaces. More precisely, for any integers $d,l\geq 1$ and any $\varepsilon> 0$, we prove the existence of $\delta>0$ and $K\geq 1$ (dependent only on d, l, and $\varepsilon $) such that the following holds: Consider a solvable group $\Gamma $ of derived length l, a probability space $(X, \mu )$, and d pairwise commuting measure-preserving $\Gamma $-actions $T_1, \ldots , T_d$ on $(X, \mu )$. Let E be a measurable set in X with $\mu (E) \geq \varepsilon $. Then, K many (left) translates of

$$ \begin{align*} \big\{\gamma\in\Gamma\colon \mu(T_1^{\gamma^{-1}}(E)\cap T_2^{\gamma^{-1}} \circ T^{\gamma^{-1}}_1(E)\cap \cdots \cap T^{\gamma^{-1}}_d\circ T^{\gamma^{-1}}_{d-1}\circ \cdots \circ T^{\gamma^{-1}}_1(E))\geq \delta \big\} \end{align*} $$

$\Gamma $

$d,l\geq 1$

$\varepsilon> 0$

$\delta>0$

$K\geq 1$

$\varepsilon $

$E\subset G^d$

$m^{\otimes d}(E)\geq \varepsilon $

$$ \begin{align*} \{g\in G\colon &m^{\otimes d}(\{(a_1,\ldots,a_n)\in G^d\colon \\ & (a_1,\ldots,a_n),(ga_1,a_2,\ldots,a_n),\ldots,(ga_1,ga_2,\ldots, ga_n)\in E\})\geq \delta \} \end{align*} $$

We extend previously known two-dimensional multiplication tiling systems that simulate multiplication by two natural numbers p and q in base $pq$ to higher dimensional multiplication tessellation systems. We develop the theory of these systems and link different multiplication tessellation systems with each other via macrotile operations that glue cubes in one tessellation system into larger cubes of another tessellation system. The macrotile operations yield topological conjugacies and factor maps between cellular automata performing multiplication by positive numbers in various bases.

We present a streamlined proof of a result essentially presented by the author in [Some counterexamples in topological dynamics. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 28(4) (2008), 1291–1322], namely that for every set $S = \{s_1, s_2, \ldots \} \subset \mathbb {N}$ of zero Banach density and finite set A, there exists a minimal zero-entropy subshift $(X, \sigma )$ so that for every sequence $u \in A^{\mathbb {Z}}$, there is $x_u \in X$ with $x_u(s_n) = u(n)$ for all $n \in \mathbb {N}$. Informally, minimal deterministic sequences can achieve completely arbitrary behavior upon restriction to a set of zero Banach density. As a corollary, this provides counterexamples to the polynomial Sarnak conjecture reported by Eisner [A polynomial version of Sarnak’s conjecture. C. R. Math. Acad. Sci. Paris 353(7) (2015), 569–572] which are significantly more general than some recently provided by Kanigowski, Lemańczyk and Radziwiłł [Prime number theorem for analytic skew products. Ann. of Math. (2) 199 (2024), 591–705] and by Lian and Shi [A counter-example for polynomial version of Sarnak’s conjecture. Adv. Math. 384 (2021), Paper no. 107765] and shows that no similar result can hold under only the assumptions of minimality and zero entropy.

We prove that every genuinely partially hyperbolic $\mathbb {Z}^r$-action by toral automorphisms can be perturbed in $C^1$-topology, so that the resulting action is continuously conjugate, but not $C^1$-conjugate, to the original one.

Under certain conditions, we construct a countable Markov partition for pointwise hyperbolic diffeomorphism $f:M\rightarrow M$ on an open invariant subset $O\subset M$, which allows the Lyapunov exponents to be zero. From this partition, we define a symbolic extension that is finite-to-one and onto a subset of O that carries the same finite f-invariant measures as O. Our method relies upon shadowing theory of a recurrent-pointwise-pseudo-orbit that we introduce. As a canonical application, we estimate the number of closed orbits for f.