We extend Katok’s result on ‘the approximation of hyperbolic measures by horseshoes’ to Banach cocycles. More precisely, let f be a $C^r(r>1)$ diffeomorphism of a compact Riemannian manifold M, preserving an ergodic hyperbolic measure $\mu $ with positive entropy, and let $\mathcal {A}$ be a Hölder continuous cocycle of bounded linear operators acting on a Banach space $\mathfrak {X}$ . We prove that there is a sequence of horseshoes for f and dominated splittings for $\mathcal {A}$ on the horseshoes, such that not only the measure theoretic entropy of f but also the Lyapunov exponents of $\mathcal {A}$ with respect to $\mu $ can be approximated by the topological entropy of f and the Lyapunov exponents of $\mathcal {A}$ on the horseshoes, respectively. As an application, we show the continuity of sub-additive topological pressure for Banach cocycles.

Much research shows that the ratings that judges assign to the same wine are uncertain. And while the ratings may be independent, research also shows that they are not identically distributed. Thus, an acute difficulty in ratings-related research and in calculating consensus among judges is that each rating is one observation drawn from a latent distribution that is wine- and judge-specific. What can be deduced about the shape of a latent distribution from one observation? A simple maximum entropy estimator is proposed to describe the distribution of a rating observed. The estimator can express the implications of zero, one, a few blind replicates, and many observations. Several tests of the estimator show that results are consistent with the results of experiments with blind replicates and that results are more accurate than results based on observed ratings alone.

In this work, we study the entropies of subsystems of shifts of finite type (SFTs) and sofic shifts on countable amenable groups. We prove that for any countable amenable group G, if X is a G-SFT with positive topological entropy $h(X)> 0$ , then the entropies of the SFT subsystems of X are dense in the interval $[0, h(X)]$ . In fact, we prove a ‘relative’ version of the same result: if X is a G-SFT and $Y \subset X$ is a subshift such that $h(Y) < h(X)$ , then the entropies of the SFTs Z for which $Y \subset Z \subset X$ are dense in $[h(Y), h(X)]$ . We also establish analogous results for sofic G-shifts.

For a $C^{1+\alpha }$ diffeomorphism f of a compact smooth manifold, we give a necessary and sufficient condition that guarantees that if the set of hyperbolic Lyapunov–Perron regular points has positive volume, then f preserves a smooth measure. We use recent results on symbolic coding of $\chi $ -non-uniformly hyperbolic sets and results concerning the existence of SRB measures for them.

Let $(X_k)_{k\geq 0}$ be a stationary and ergodic process with joint distribution $\mu $ , where the random variables $X_k$ take values in a finite set $\mathcal {A}$ . Let $R_n$ be the first time this process repeats its first n symbols of output. It is well known that $({1}/{n})\log R_n$ converges almost surely to the entropy of the process. Refined properties of $R_n$ (large deviations, multifractality, etc) are encoded in the return-time $L^q$ -spectrum defined as

provided the limit exists. We consider the case where $(X_k)_{k\geq 0}$ is distributed according to the equilibrium state of a potential with summable variation, and we prove that

where $P((1-q)\varphi )$ is the topological pressure of $(1-q)\varphi $ , the supremum is taken over all shift-invariant measures, and $q_\varphi ^*$ is the unique solution of $P((1-q)\varphi ) =\sup _\eta \int \varphi \,d\eta $ . Unexpectedly, this spectrum does not coincide with the $L^q$ -spectrum of $\mu _\varphi $ , which is $P((1-q)\varphi )$ , and it does not coincide with the waiting-time $L^q$ -spectrum in general. In fact, the return-time $L^q$ -spectrum coincides with the waiting-time $L^q$ -spectrum if and only if the equilibrium state of $\varphi $ is the measure of maximal entropy. As a by-product, we also improve the large deviation asymptotics of $({1}/{n})\log R_n$ .

We present several applications of the weak specification property and certain topological Markov properties, recently introduced by Barbieri, García-Ramos, and Li [Markovian properties of continuous group actions: algebraic actions, entropy and the homoclinic group. Adv. Math. 397 (2022), 52], and implied by the pseudo-orbit tracing property, for general expansive group actions on compact spaces. First we show that any expansive action of a countable amenable group on a compact metrizable space satisfying the weak specification and strong topological Markov properties satisfies the Moore property, that is, every surjective endomorphism of such dynamical system is pre-injective. This together with an earlier result of Li (where the strong topological Markov property is not needed) of the Myhill property [Garden of Eden and specification. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 39 (2019), 3075–3088], which we also re-prove here, establishes the Garden of Eden theorem for all expansive actions of countable amenable groups on compact metrizable spaces satisfying the weak specification and strong topological Markov properties. We hint how to easily generalize this result even for uncountable amenable groups and general compact, not necessarily metrizable, spaces. Second, we generalize the recent result of Cohen [The large scale geometry of strongly aperiodic subshifts of finite type. Adv. Math. 308 (2017), 599–626] that any subshift of finite type of a finitely generated group having at least two ends has weakly periodic points. We show that every expansive action of such a group having a certain Markov topological property, again implied by the pseudo-orbit tracing property, has a weakly periodic point. If it has additionally the weak specification property, the set of such points is dense.

We show that the complete positive entropy (CPE) class $\alpha $ of Barbieri and García-Ramos contains a one-dimensional subshift for all countable ordinals $\alpha $ , that is, the process of alternating topological and transitive closure on the entropy pairs relation of a subshift can end on an arbitrary ordinal. This is the composition of three constructions. We first realize every ordinal as the length of an abstract ‘close-up’ process on a countable compact space. Next, we realize any abstract process on a compact zero-dimensional metrizable space as the process started from a shift-invariant relation on a subshift, the crucial construction being the implementation of every compact metrizable zero-dimensional space as an open invariant quotient of a subshift. Finally, we realize any shift-invariant relation E on a subshift X as the entropy pair relation of a supershift $Y \supset X$ , and under strong technical assumptions, we can make the CPE process on Y end on the same ordinal as the close-up process of E.

In this text, we provide a fully rigorous and complete proof of E.H. Lieb’s statement that (topological) entropy of square ice (or six-vertex model, XXZ spin chain for anisotropy parameter $\Delta =1/2$) is equal to $\tfrac 32\log _{2} (4/3)$.