We show that self-similar measures on $\mathbb R^d$ satisfying the weak separation condition are uniformly scaling. Our approach combines elementary ergodic theory with geometric analysis of the structure given by the weak separation condition.

We compute the gap distribution of directions of saddle connections for two classes of translation surfaces. One class will be the translation surfaces arising from gluing two identical tori along a slit. These yield the first explicit computations of gap distributions for non-lattice translation surfaces. We show that this distribution has support at zero and quadratic tail decay. We also construct examples of translation surfaces in any genus $d>1$ that have the same gap distribution as the gap distribution of two identical tori glued along a slit. The second class we consider are twice-marked tori and saddle connections between distinct marked points with a specific orientation. These results can be interpreted as the gap distribution of slopes of affine lattices. We obtain our results by translating the question of gap distributions to a dynamical question of return times to a transversal under the horocycle flow on an appropriate moduli space.

We consider backward filtrations generated by processes coming from deterministic and probabilistic cellular automata. We prove that these filtrations are standard in the classical sense of Vershik’s theory, but we also study them from another point of view that takes into account the measure-preserving action of the shift map, for which each sigma-algebra in the filtrations is invariant. This initiates what we call the dynamical classification of factor filtrations, and the examples we study show that this classification leads to different results.

In this paper we prove a local exponential synchronization for Markovian random iterations of homeomorphisms of the circle $S^{1}$ , providing a new result on stochastic circle dynamics even for $C^1$ -diffeomorphisms. This result is obtained by combining an invariance principle for stationary random iterations of homeomorphisms of the circle with a Krylov–Bogolyubov-type result for homogeneous Markov chains.

Mixing rates, relaxation rates, and decay of correlations for dynamics defined by potentials with summable variations are well understood, but little is known for non-summable variations. This paper exhibits upper bounds for these quantities for dynamics defined by potentials with square-summable variations. We obtain these bounds as corollaries of a new block coupling inequality between pairs of dynamics starting with different histories. As applications of our results, we prove a new weak invariance principle and a Hoeffding-type inequality.

In this article we study physical measures for $\operatorname {C}^{1+\alpha }$ partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms with a mostly expanding center. We show that every diffeomorphism with a mostly expanding center direction exhibits a geometrical-combinatorial structure, which we call skeleton, that determines the number, basins and supports of the physical measures. Furthermore, the skeleton allows us to describe how physical measures bifurcate as the diffeomorphism changes under $C^1$ topology.

Moreover, for each diffeomorphism with a mostly expanding center, there exists a $C^1$ neighbourhood, such that diffeomorphism among a $C^1$ residual subset of this neighbourhood admits finitely many physical measures, whose basins have full volume.

We also show that the physical measures for diffeomorphisms with a mostly expanding center satisfy exponential decay of correlation for any Hölder observes. In particular, we prove that every $C^2$ , partially hyperbolic, accessible diffeomorphism with 1-dimensional center and nonvanishing center exponent has exponential decay of correlations for Hölder functions.

Given any smooth Anosov map, we construct a Banach space on which the associated transfer operator is quasi-compact. The peculiarity of such a space is that, in the case of expanding maps, it reduces exactly to the usual space of functions of bounded variation which has proved to be particularly successful in studying the statistical properties of piecewise expanding maps. Our approach is based on a new method of studying the absolute continuity of foliations, which provides new information that could prove useful in treating hyperbolic systems with singularities.

A zero-entropy system is said to be loosely Bernoulli if it can be induced from an irrational rotation of the circle. We provide a criterion for zero-entropy systems to be loosely Bernoulli that is compatible with mixing. Using this criterion, we show the existence of smooth mixing zero-entropy loosely Bernoulli transformations whose Cartesian square is loosely Bernoulli.

We consider a smooth area-preserving Anosov diffeomorphism $f\colon \mathbb T^2\rightarrow \mathbb T^2$ homotopic to an Anosov automorphism L of $\mathbb T^2$ . It is known that the positive Lyapunov exponent of f with respect to the normalized Lebesgue measure is less than or equal to the topological entropy of L, which, in addition, is less than or equal to the Lyapunov exponent of f with respect to the probability measure of maximal entropy. Moreover, the equalities only occur simultaneously. We show that these are the only restrictions on these two dynamical invariants.

We develop a thermodynamic formalism for a smooth realization of pseudo-Anosov surface homeomorphisms. In this realization, the singularities of the pseudo-Anosov map are assumed to be fixed, and the trajectories are slowed down so the differential is the identity at these points. Using Young towers, we prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states for geometric t-potentials. This family of equilibrium states includes a unique SRB measure and a measure of maximal entropy, the latter of which has exponential decay of correlations and the central limit theorem.

We characterize topological conjugacy classes of one-sided topological Markov shifts in terms of the associated Cuntz–Krieger algebras and their gauge actions with potentials.

We give an example of a principal algebraic action of the non-commutative free group ${\mathbb {F}}$ of rank two by automorphisms of a connected compact abelian group for which there is an explicit measurable isomorphism with the full Bernoulli 3-shift action of ${\mathbb {F}}$ . The isomorphism is defined using homoclinic points, a method that has been used to construct symbolic covers of algebraic actions. To our knowledge, this is the first example of a Bernoulli algebraic action of ${\mathbb {F}}$ without an obvious independent generator. Our methods can be generalized to a large class of acting groups.

Let M be a geometrically finite acylindrical hyperbolic $3$ -manifold and let $M^*$ denote the interior of the convex core of M. We show that any geodesic plane in $M^*$ is either closed or dense, and that there are only countably many closed geodesic planes in $M^*$ . These results were obtained by McMullen, Mohammadi and Oh [Geodesic planes in hyperbolic 3-manifolds. Invent. Math.209 (2017), 425–461; Geodesic planes in the convex core of an acylindrical 3-manifold. Duke Math. J., to appear, Preprint, 2018, arXiv:1802.03853] when M is convex cocompact. As a corollary, we obtain that when M covers an arithmetic hyperbolic $3$ -manifold $M_0$ , the topological behavior of a geodesic plane in $M^*$ is governed by that of the corresponding plane in $M_0$ . We construct a counterexample of this phenomenon when $M_0$ is non-arithmetic.

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 prove that all invariant random subgroups of the lamplighter group L are co-sofic. It follows that L is permutation stable, providing an example of an infinitely presented such group. Our proof applies more generally to all permutational wreath products of finitely generated abelian groups. We rely on the pointwise ergodic theorem for amenable groups.

We introduce two properties: strong R-property and $C(q)$ -property, describing a special way of divergence of nearby trajectories for an abstract measure-preserving system. We show that systems satisfying the strong R-property are disjoint (in the sense of Furstenberg) with systems satisfying the $C(q)$ -property. Moreover, we show that if $u_t$ is a unipotent flow on $G/\Gamma $ with $\Gamma $ irreducible, then $u_t$ satisfies the $C(q)$ -property provided that $u_t$ is not of the form $h_t\times \operatorname {id}$ , where $h_t$ is the classical horocycle flow. Finally, we show that the strong R-property holds for all (smooth) time changes of horocycle flows and non-trivial time changes of bounded-type Heisenberg nilflows.

Let S be an orientable surface of finite type. Using Pho-on’s infinite unicorn paths, we prove the hyperfiniteness of orbit equivalence relations induced by the actions of the mapping class group of S on the Gromov boundaries of the arc graph and the curve graph of S. In the curve graph case, this strengthens the results of Hamenstädt and Kida that this action is universally amenable and that the mapping class group of S is exact.

Entropy dimension is an entropy-type quantity which takes values in $[0,1]$ and classifies different levels of intermediate growth rate of complexity for dynamical systems. In this paper, we consider the complexity of skew products of irrational rotations with Bernoulli systems, which can be viewed as deterministic walks in random sceneries, and show that this class of models can have any given entropy dimension by choosing suitable rotations for the base system.

We consider random walks on the group of orientation-preserving homeomorphisms of the real line ${\mathbb R}$ . In particular, the fundamental question of uniqueness of an invariant measure of the generated process is raised. This problem was studied by Choquet and Deny [Sur l’équation de convolution $\mu = \mu * \sigma $ . C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris250 (1960), 799–801] in the context of random walks generated by translations of the line. Nowadays the answer is quite well understood in general settings of strongly contractive systems. Here we focus on a broader class of systems satisfying the conditions of recurrence, contraction and unbounded action. We prove that under these conditions the random process possesses a unique invariant Radon measure on ${\mathbb R}$ . Our work can be viewed as following on from Babillot et al [The random difference equation $X_n=A_n X_{n-1}+B_n$ in the critical case. Ann. Probab.25(1) (1997), 478–493] and Deroin et al [Symmetric random walk on $\mathrm {HOMEO}^{+}(\mathbb {R})$ . Ann. Probab.41(3B) (2013), 2066–2089].

We prove that if a closed hyperbolic $3$ -manifold M contains infinitely many totally geodesic surfaces, then M is arithmetic.