We explore new connections between the dynamics of conservative partially hyperbolic systems and the geometric measure-theoretic properties of their invariant foliations. Our methods are applied to two main classes of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms: fibered partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms and center-fixing partially hyperbolic systems. When the center is one-dimensional, assuming the diffeomorphism is accessible, we prove that the disintegration of the volume measure along the center foliation is either atomic or Lebesgue. Moreover, the latter case is rigid in dimension three (this does not require accessibility): the center foliation is actually smooth and the diffeomorphism is smoothly conjugate to an explicit rigid model. A partial extension to fibered partially hyperbolic systems with compact fibers of any dimension is also obtained. A common feature of these classes of diffeomorphisms is that the center leaves either are compact or can be made compact by taking an appropriate dynamically defined quotient. For volume-preserving partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms whose center foliation is absolutely continuous, if the generic center leaf is a circle, then every center leaf is compact.

For a continuous function $f:[0,1] \to [0,1]$ we define a splitting sequence admitted by f and show that the inverse limit of f is an arc if and only if f does not admit a splitting sequence.

We generalize a combinatorial formula of Douady from the main cardioid to other hyperbolic components H of the Mandelbrot set, constructing an explicit piecewise linear map which sends the set of angles of external rays landing on H to the set of angles of external rays landing on the real axis.

In this paper we prove bounds for ergodic averages for nilflows on general higher-step nilmanifolds. Under Diophantine condition on the frequency of a toral projection of the flow, we prove that almost all orbits become equidistributed at polynomial speed. We analyze the rate of decay which is determined by the number of steps and structure of general nilpotent Lie algebras. Our main result follows from the technique of controlling scaling operators in irreducible representations and measure estimation on close return orbits on general nilmanifolds.

This is the first of a series of two papers dealing with local limit theorems in relatively hyperbolic groups. In this first paper, we prove rough estimates for the Green function. Along the way, we introduce the notion of relative automaticity which will be useful in both papers and we show that relatively hyperbolic groups are relatively automatic. We also define the notion of spectral positive recurrence for random walks on relatively hyperbolic groups. We then use our estimates for the Green function to prove that $p_n\asymp R^{-n}n^{-3/2}$ for spectrally positive-recurrent random walks, where $p_n$ is the probability of going back to the origin at time n and where R is the inverse of the spectral radius of the random walk.

Foreman and Weiss [Measure preserving diffeomorphisms of the torus are unclassifiable. Preprint, 2020, arXiv:1705.04414] obtained an anti-classification result for smooth ergodic diffeomorphisms, up to measure isomorphism, by using a functor $\mathcal {F}$ (see [Foreman and Weiss, From odometers to circular systems: a global structure theorem. J. Mod. Dyn.15 (2019), 345–423]) mapping odometer-based systems, $\mathcal {OB}$ , to circular systems, $\mathcal {CB}$ . This functor transfers the classification problem from $\mathcal {OB}$ to $\mathcal {CB}$ , and it preserves weakly mixing extensions, compact extensions, factor maps, the rank-one property, and certain types of isomorphisms. Thus it is natural to ask whether $\mathcal {F}$ preserves other dynamical properties. We show that $\mathcal {F}$ does not preserve the loosely Bernoulli property by providing positive and zero-entropy examples of loosely Bernoulli odometer-based systems whose corresponding circular systems are not loosely Bernoulli. We also construct a loosely Bernoulli circular system whose corresponding odometer-based system has zero entropy and is not loosely Bernoulli.

This is the second part of our study on the dimension theory of $C^1$ iterated function systems (IFSs) and repellers on $\mathbb {R}^d$ . In the first part [D.-J. Feng and K. Simon. Dimension estimates for $C^1$ iterated function systems and repellers. Part I. Preprint, 2020, arXiv:2007.15320], we proved that the upper box-counting dimension of the attractor of every $C^1$ IFS on ${\Bbb R}^d$ is bounded above by its singularity dimension, and the upper packing dimension of every ergodic invariant measure associated with this IFS is bounded above by its Lyapunov dimension. Here we introduce a generalized transversality condition (GTC) for parameterized families of $C^1$ IFSs, and show that if the GTC is satisfied, then the dimensions of the IFS attractor and of the ergodic invariant measures are given by these upper bounds for almost every (in an appropriate sense) parameter. Moreover, we verify the GTC for some parameterized families of $C^1$ IFSs on ${\Bbb R}^d$ .

In this paper we prove a perturbative result for a class of ${\mathbb Z}^2$ actions on Heisenberg nilmanifolds that have Diophantine properties. Along the way we prove cohomological rigidity and obtain a tame splitting for the cohomology with coefficients in smooth vector fields for such actions.

We prove almost everywhere convergence of continuous-time quadratic averages with respect to two commuting $\mathbb {R}$ -actions, coming from a single jointly measurable measure-preserving $\mathbb {R}^2$ -action on a probability space. The key ingredient of the proof comes from recent work on multilinear singular integrals; more specifically, from the study of a curved model for the triangular Hilbert transform.

We bound the number of distinct minimal subsystems of a given transitive subshift of linear complexity, continuing work of Ormes and Pavlov [On the complexity function for sequences which are not uniformly recurrent. Dynamical Systems and Random Processes (Contemporary Mathematics, 736). American Mathematical Society, Providence, RI, 2019, pp. 125--137]. We also bound the number of generic measures such a subshift can support based on its complexity function. Our measure-theoretic bounds generalize those of Boshernitzan [A unique ergodicity of minimal symbolic flows with linear block growth. J. Anal. Math.44(1) (1984), 77–96] and are closely related to those of Cyr and Kra [Counting generic measures for a subshift of linear growth. J. Eur. Math. Soc.21(2) (2019), 355–380].

In this paper we investigate the range of validity of Ruelle’s property. First, we show that every finitely generated Fuchsian group has Ruelle’s property. We also prove the existence of an infinitely generated Fuchsian group satisfying Ruelle’s property. Concerning the negative results, we first generalize Astala and Zinsmeister’s results [Mostow rigidity and Fuchsian groups. C. R. Math. Acad. Sci. Paris311 (1990), 301–306; Teichmüller spaces and BMOA. Math. Ann.289 (1991), 613–625] by proving that all convergence-type Fuchsian groups of the first kind fail to have Ruelle’s property. Finally, we give some results about second-kind Fuchsian groups. [-3.2pc]

We consider the complexity of special $\alpha $ -limit sets, a kind of backward limit set for non-invertible dynamical systems. We show that these sets are always analytic, but not necessarily Borel, even in the case of a surjective map on the unit square. This answers a question posed by Kolyada, Misiurewicz, and Snoha.

Dendric shifts are defined by combinatorial restrictions of the extensions of the words in their languages. This family generalizes well-known families of shifts such as Sturmian shifts, Arnoux–Rauzy shifts and codings of interval exchange transformations. It is known that any minimal dendric shift has a primitive $\mathcal {S}$ -adic representation where the morphisms in $\mathcal {S}$ are positive tame automorphisms of the free group generated by the alphabet. In this paper, we investigate those $\mathcal {S}$ -adic representations, heading towards an $\mathcal {S}$ -adic characterization of this family. We obtain such a characterization in the ternary case, involving a directed graph with two vertices.

We consider continuous free semigroup actions generated by a family $(g_y)_{y \,\in \, Y}$ of continuous endomorphisms of a compact metric space $(X,d)$ , subject to a random walk $\mathbb P_\nu =\nu ^{\mathbb N}$ defined on a shift space $Y^{\mathbb N}$ , where $(Y, d_Y)$ is a compact metric space with finite upper box dimension and $\nu $ is a Borel probability measure on Y. With the aim of elucidating the impact of the random walk on the metric mean dimension, we prove a variational principle which relates the metric mean dimension of the semigroup action with the corresponding notions for the associated skew product and the shift map $\sigma $ on $Y^{\mathbb {N}}$ , and compare them with the upper box dimension of Y. In particular, we obtain exact formulas whenever $\nu $ is homogeneous and has full support. We also discuss several examples to enlighten the roles of the homogeneity, of the support and of the upper box dimension of the measure $\nu $ , and to test the scope of our results.

We refine the recent local rigidity result for the marked length spectrum obtained by the first and third author in [GL19] and give an alternative proof using the geodesic stretch between two Anosov flows and some uniform estimate on the variance appearing in the central limit theorem for Anosov geodesic flows. In turn, we also introduce a new pressure metric on the space of isometry classes, which reduces to the Weil–Petersson metric in the case of Teichmüller space and is related to the works [BCLS15, MM08].

We construct a $C^1$ symplectic twist map g of the annulus that has an essential invariant curve $\Gamma $ such that $\Gamma $ is not differentiable and g restricted to $\Gamma $ is minimal.

It has been recently proved that the automorphism group of a minimal subshift with non-superlinear word complexity is virtually $\mathbb {Z}$ [Cyr and Kra. The automorphism group of a shift of linear growth: beyond transitivity. Forum Math. Sigma3 (2015), e5; Donoso et al. On automorphism groups of low complexity subshifts. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.36(1) (2016), 64–95]. In this article we extend this result to a broader class proving that the automorphism group of a minimal $\mathcal {S}$ -adic subshift of finite alphabet rank is virtually $\mathbb {Z}$ . The proof is based on a fine combinatorial analysis of the asymptotic classes in this type of subshifts, which we prove are a finite number.

The aim of this article is to apply a Floer theory to study symmetric periodic Reeb orbits. We define positive equivariant wrapped Floer homology using a (anti-)symplectic involution on a Liouville domain and investigate its algebraic properties. By a careful analysis of index iterations, we obtain a non-trivial lower bound on the minimal number of geometrically distinct symmetric periodic Reeb orbits on a certain class of real contact manifolds. This includes non-degenerate real dynamically convex star-shaped hypersurfaces in ${\mathbb {R}}^{2n}$ which are invariant under complex conjugation. As a result, we give a partial answer to the Seifert conjecture on brake orbits in the contact setting.

We introduce some notions of conditional mean dimension for a factor map between two topological dynamical systems and discuss their properties. With the help of these notions, we obtain an inequality to estimate the mean dimension of an extension system. The conditional mean dimension for G-extensions is computed. We also exhibit some applications in dynamical embedding problems.

For any infinite transitive sofic shift X we construct a reversible cellular automaton (that is, an automorphism of the shift X) which breaks any given finite point of the subshift into a finite collection of gliders traveling into opposing directions. This shows in addition that every infinite transitive sofic shift has a reversible cellular automaton which is sensitive with respect to all directions. As another application we prove a finitary version of Ryan’s theorem: the automorphism group $\operatorname {\mathrm {Aut}}(X)$ contains a two-element subset whose centralizer consists only of shift maps. We also show that in the class of S-gap shifts these results do not extend beyond the sofic case.