We consider dynamical systems $T:X\rightarrow X$ that are extensions of a factor $S:Y\rightarrow Y$ through a projection $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}:X\rightarrow Y$ with shrinking fibers, that is, such that $T$ is uniformly continuous along fibers $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}^{-1}(y)$ and the diameter of iterate images of fibers $T^{n}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}^{-1}(y))$ uniformly go to zero as $n\rightarrow \infty$. We prove that every $S$-invariant measure $\check{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}$ has a unique $T$-invariant lift $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$, and prove that many properties of $\check{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}$ lift to $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$: ergodicity, weak and strong mixing, decay of correlations and statistical properties (possibly with weakening in the rates). The basic tool is a variation of the Wasserstein distance, obtained by constraining the optimal transportation paradigm to displacements along the fibers. We extend classical arguments to a general setting, enabling us to translate potentials and observables back and forth between $X$ and $Y$.

Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ be an irrational real number. The map $T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}}:y\mapsto (y+\unicode[STIX]{x1D703})\!\hspace{0.6em}{\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}1$ from the unit interval $\mathbf{I}= [\!0,1\![$ (endowed with the Lebesgue measure) to itself is ergodic. In a short paper [Parry, Automorphisms of the Bernoulli endomorphism and a class of skew-products. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.16 (1996), 519–529] published in 1996, Parry provided an explicit isomorphism between the measure-preserving map $[T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}},\text{Id}]$ and the unilateral dyadic Bernoulli shift when $\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$ is extremely well approximated by the rational numbers, namely, if

$$\begin{eqnarray}\inf _{q\geq 1}q^{4}4^{q^{2}}~\text{dist}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703},q^{-1}\mathbb{Z})=0.\end{eqnarray}$$

$[T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}},\text{Id}]$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$

$[T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}},\text{Id}]$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\inf _{q\geq 1}q^{4}~\text{dist}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703},q^{-1}\mathbb{Z})=0.\end{eqnarray}$$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\inf _{n\geq 1}q_{n}^{3}~(a_{1}+\cdots +a_{n})~|q_{n}\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}-p_{n}|<+\infty ,\end{eqnarray}$$

$[0;a_{1},a_{2},\ldots ]$

$(p_{n}/q_{n})_{n\geq 0}$

$\Vert \unicode[STIX]{x1D703}\Vert :=\text{dist}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D703},\mathbb{Z})$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D703}$

Von Neumann’s original proof of the ergodic theorem is revisited. A uniform convergence rate is established under the assumption that one can control the density of the spectrum of the underlying self-adjoint operator when restricted to suitable subspaces. Explicit rates are obtained when the bound is polynomial, with applications to the linear Schrödinger and wave equations. In particular, decay estimates for time averages of solutions are shown.

An abstract system of congruences describes a way of partitioning a space into finitely many pieces satisfying certain congruence relations. Examples of abstract systems of congruences include paradoxical decompositions and $n$-divisibility of actions. We consider the general question of when there are realizations of abstract systems of congruences satisfying various measurability constraints. We completely characterize which abstract systems of congruences can be realized by nonmeager Baire measurable pieces of the sphere under the action of rotations on the $2$-sphere. This answers a question by Wagon. We also construct Borel realizations of abstract systems of congruences for the action of $\mathsf{PSL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})$ on $\mathsf{P}^{1}(\mathbb{R})$. The combinatorial underpinnings of our proof are certain types of decomposition of Borel graphs into paths. We also use these decompositions to obtain some results about measurable unfriendly colorings.

In this paper we develop an in-depth analysis of non-reversible Markov chains on denumerable state space from a similarity orbit perspective. In particular, we study the class of Markov chains whose transition kernel is in the similarity orbit of a normal transition kernel, such as that of birth–death chains or reversible Markov chains. We start by identifying a set of sufficient conditions for a Markov chain to belong to the similarity orbit of a birth–death chain. As by-products, we obtain a spectral representation in terms of non-self-adjoint resolutions of identity in the sense of Dunford [21] and offer a detailed analysis on the convergence rate, separation cutoff and L2-cutoff of this class of non-reversible Markov chains. We also look into the problem of estimating the integral functionals from discrete observations for this class. In the last part of this paper we investigate a particular similarity orbit of reversible Markov kernels, which we call the pure birth orbit, and analyse various possibly non-reversible variants of classical birth–death processes in this orbit.

The Chirikov standard map is a prototypical example of a one-parameter family of volume-preserving maps for which one anticipates chaotic behavior on a non-negligible (positive-volume) subset of phase space for a large set of parameters. Rigorous analysis is notoriously difficult and it remains an open question whether this chaotic region, the stochastic sea, has positive Lebesgue measure for any parameter value. Here we study a problem of intermediate difficulty: compositions of standard maps with increasing coefficient. When the coefficients increase to infinity at a sufficiently fast polynomial rate, we obtain a strong law, a central limit theorem, and quantitative mixing estimates for Holder observables. The methods used are not specific to the standard map and apply to a class of compositions of ‘prototypical’ two-dimensional maps with hyperbolicity on ‘most’ of phase space.

We provide a systematic study of a non-commutative extension of the classical Anzai skew-product for the cartesian product of two copies of the unit circle to the non-commutative 2-tori. In particular, some relevant ergodic properties are proved for these quantum dynamical systems, extending the corresponding ones enjoyed by the classical Anzai skew-product. As an application, for a uniquely ergodic Anzai skew-product $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}$ on the non-commutative $2$-torus $\mathbb{A}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\in \mathbb{R}$, we investigate the pointwise limit, $\lim _{n\rightarrow +\infty }(1/n)\sum _{k=0}^{n-1}\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}^{-k}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F7}^{k}(x)$, for $x\in \mathbb{A}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}$ and $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$ a point in the unit circle, and show that there are examples for which the limit does not exist, even in the weak topology.

We discuss the relation between the existence of fixed points of the Ruelle operator acting on different Banach spaces, and Sullivan’s conjecture in holomorphic dynamics.

In this survey we prove the sharpest results on the loss of Sobolev regularity for solutions of the cohomological equation for translation flows on translation surfaces, available to the methods developed by the author in Forni [Solutions of the cohomological equation for area-preserving flows on compact surfaces of higher genus. Ann. of Math. (2)146(2) (1997), 295–344] and Forni [Deviation of ergodic averages for area-preserving flows on surfaces of higher genus. Ann. of Math. (2)155(1) (2002), 1–103]. The paper was mostly written between 2005 and 2006 while the author was at the University of Toronto, Canada, and was posted on arXiv in July 2007 [Forni. Sobolev regularity of solutions of the cohomological equation. Preprint, 2007, arXiv:0707.0940v2]. In an updated introduction we describe our results, taking into account later work on the problem and relevant recent progress in the field of Teichmüller dynamics, interval exchange transformations and translation flows.

For a one-parameter subgroup action on a finite-volume homogeneous space, we consider the set of points admitting divergent-on-average trajectories. We show that the Hausdorff dimension of this set is strictly less than the manifold dimension of the homogeneous space. As a corollary we know that the Hausdorff dimension of the set of points admitting divergent trajectories is not full, which proves a conjecture of Cheung [Hausdorff dimension of the set of singular pairs, Ann. of Math. (2) 173 (2011), 127–167].

We study dynamical systems $(X,G,m)$ with a compact metric space $X$, a locally compact, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$-compact, abelian group $G$ and an invariant Borel probability measure $m$ on $X$. We show that such a system has a discrete spectrum if and only if a certain space average over the metric is a Bohr almost periodic function. In this way, this average over the metric plays, for general dynamical systems, a similar role to that of the autocorrelation measure in the study of aperiodic order for special dynamical systems based on point sets.

We examine necessary and sufficient conditions for recurrence and positive recurrence of a class of irreducible, level-dependent quasi-birth-and-death (LDQBD) processes with a block tridiagonal structure that exhibits asymptotic convergence in the rows as the level tends to infinity. These conditions are obtained by exploiting a multi-dimensional Lyapunov drift approach, along with the theory of generalized Markov group inverses. Additionally, we highlight analogies to well-known average drift results for level-independent quasi-birth-and-death (QBD) processes.

We establish the limiting distribution of certain subsets of Farey sequences, i.e., sequences of primitive rational points, on expanding horospheres in covers $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}\backslash \text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$ of $\text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{Z})\backslash \text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}$ is a finite-index subgroup of $\text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{Z})$. These subsets can be obtained by projecting to the hyperplane $\{(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n+1})\in \mathbb{R}^{n+1}:x_{n+1}=1\}$ sets of the form $\mathbf{A}=\bigcup _{j=1}^{J}\mathbf{a}_{j}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}$, where for all $j$, $\mathbf{a}_{j}$ is a primitive lattice point in $\mathbb{Z}^{n+1}$. Our method involves applying the equidistribution of expanding horospheres in quotients of $\text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$ developed by Marklof and Strömbergsson, and more precisely understanding how the full Farey sequence distributes in $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}\backslash \text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$ when embedded on expanding horospheres as done in previous work by Marklof. For each of the Farey sequence subsets, we extend the statistical results by Marklof regarding the full multidimensional Farey sequences, and solutions by Athreya and Ghosh to Diophantine approximation problems of Erdős–Szüsz–Turán and Kesten. We also prove that Marklof’s result on the asymptotic distribution of Frobenius numbers holds for sets of primitive lattice points of the form $\mathbf{A}$.

Let $X$ be a finite-dimensional connected compact abelian group equipped with the normalized Haar measure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$. We obtain the following mean ergodic theorem over ‘thin’ phase sets. Fix $k\geq 1$ and, for every $n\geq 1$, let $A_{n}$ be a subset of $\mathbb{Z}^{k}\cap [-n,n]^{k}$. Assume that $(A_{n})_{n\geq 1}$ has $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(1/n)$ density in the sense that $\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }(|A_{n}|/n^{k-1})=\infty$. Let $T_{1},\ldots ,T_{k}$ be ergodic automorphisms of $X$. We have

$$\begin{eqnarray}\frac{1}{|A_{n}|}\mathop{\sum }_{(n_{1},\ldots ,n_{k})\in A_{n}}f_{1}(T_{1}^{n_{1}}(x))\cdots f_{k}(T_{k}^{n_{k}}(x))\stackrel{L_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}^{2}}{\longrightarrow }\int f_{1}\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}\cdots \int f_{k}\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D707},\end{eqnarray}$$

$f_{1},\ldots ,f_{k}\in L_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}^{\infty }$

$T_{i}$

$A_{n}$

$[0,n]^{k}$

$n$

$A_{i}$

Let $m\in \mathbb{N}$ and $\mathbf{X}=(X,{\mathcal{X}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D707},(T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}})_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\in \mathbb{R}^{m}})$ be a measure-preserving system with an $\mathbb{R}^{m}$-action. We say that a Borel measure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ on $\mathbb{R}^{m}$ is weakly equidistributed for $\mathbf{X}$ if there exists $A\subseteq \mathbb{R}$ of density 1 such that, for all $f\in L^{\infty }(\unicode[STIX]{x1D707})$, we have

$$\begin{eqnarray}\lim _{t\in A,t\rightarrow \infty }\int _{\mathbb{R}^{m}}f(T_{t\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}}x)\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC})=\int _{X}f\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$

$x\in X$

$W(\mathbf{X})$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}\in \mathbb{R}^{m}$

$\mathbb{R}$

$(T_{t\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FC}})_{t\in \mathbb{R}}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$

$\mathbb{R}^{m}$

$\mathbf{X}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}(W(\mathbf{X})+\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD})=0$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}\in \mathbb{R}^{m}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$

$\mathbb{R}^{m}$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}(\ell )=0$

$\ell$

$\mathbb{R}^{m}$

Let $(X,{\mathcal{B}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D707},T)$ be an ergodic measure-preserving system, let $A\in {\mathcal{B}}$ and let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}>0$. We study the largeness of sets of the form

$$\begin{eqnarray}S=\{n\in \mathbb{N}:\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(A\cap T^{-f_{1}(n)}A\cap T^{-f_{2}(n)}A\cap \cdots \cap T^{-f_{k}(n)}A)>\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(A)^{k+1}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}\}\end{eqnarray}$$

$\{f_{1},\ldots ,f_{k}\}$

$f_{i}:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{N}$

$k\leq 3$

$f_{i}(n)=if(n)$

$S$

$f(n)=q(p_{n})$

$q\in \mathbb{Z}[x]$

$q(1)$

$q(-1)=0$

$p_{n}$

$n$

$f$

$T^{q}$

$q\in \mathbb{N}$

$r\in \mathbb{Z}$

$S$

$f(n)=qn+r$

$f_{i}(n)=a_{i}n$

$a_{i}$

$S$

$k\geq 4$

$k=3$

$S$

$f_{i}$

We study dynamical systems that have bounded complexity with respect to three kinds metrics: the Bowen metric $d_{n}$, the max-mean metric $\hat{d}_{n}$ and the mean metric $\bar{d}_{n}$, both in topological dynamics and ergodic theory. It is shown that a topological dynamical system $(X,T)$ has bounded complexity with respect to $d_{n}$ (respectively $\hat{d}_{n}$) if and only if it is equicontinuous (respectively equicontinuous in the mean). However, we construct minimal systems that have bounded complexity with respect to $\bar{d}_{n}$ but that are not equicontinuous in the mean. It turns out that an invariant measure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ on $(X,T)$ has bounded complexity with respect to $d_{n}$ if and only if $(X,T)$ is $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$-equicontinuous. Meanwhile, it is shown that $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ has bounded complexity with respect to $\hat{d}_{n}$ if and only if $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$ has bounded complexity with respect to $\bar{d}_{n}$, if and only if $(X,T)$ is $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$-mean equicontinuous and if and only if it has discrete spectrum.

We study the existence of various sign and value patterns in sequences defined by multiplicative functions or related objects. For any set $A$ whose indicator function is ‘approximately multiplicative’ and uniformly distributed on short intervals in a suitable sense, we show that the density of the pattern $n+1\in A$, $n+2\in A$, $n+3\in A$ is positive as long as $A$ has density greater than $\frac{1}{3}$. Using an inverse theorem for sumsets and some tools from ergodic theory, we also provide a theorem that deals with the critical case of $A$ having density exactly $\frac{1}{3}$, below which one would need nontrivial information on the local distribution of $A$ in Bohr sets to proceed. We apply our results first to answer in a stronger form a question of Erdős and Pomerance on the relative orderings of the largest prime factors $P^{+}(n)$, $P^{+}(n+1),P^{+}(n+2)$ of three consecutive integers. Second, we show that the tuple $(\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(n+1),\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(n+2),\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(n+3))~(\text{mod}~3)$ takes all the $27$ possible patterns in $(\mathbb{Z}/3\mathbb{Z})^{3}$ with positive lower density, with $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(n)$ being the number of distinct prime divisors. We also prove a theorem concerning longer patterns $n+i\in A_{i}$, $i=1,\ldots ,k$ in approximately multiplicative sets $A_{i}$ having large enough densities, generalizing some results of Hildebrand on his ‘stable sets conjecture’. Finally, we consider the sign patterns of the Liouville function $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}$ and show that there are at least $24$ patterns of length $5$ that occur with positive upper density. In all the proofs, we make extensive use of recent ideas concerning correlations of multiplicative functions.

The notion of quantized characters was introduced in our previous paper as a natural quantization of characters in the context of asymptotic representation theory for quantum groups. As in the case of ordinary groups, the representation associated with any extreme quantized character generates a von Neumann factor. From the viewpoint of operator algebras (and measurable dynamical systems), it is natural to ask what is the Murray–von Neumann–Connes type of the resulting factor. In this paper, we give a complete solution to this question when the inductive system is of quantum unitary groups $U_{q}(N)$.

A category structure for ordered Bratteli diagrams is proposed in which isomorphism coincides with the notion of equivalence of Herman, Putnam, and Skau. It is shown that the natural one-to-one correspondence between the category of Cantor minimal systems and the category of simple properly ordered Bratteli diagrams is in fact an equivalence of categories. This gives a Bratteli–Vershik model for factor maps between Cantor minimal systems. We give a construction of factor maps between Cantor minimal systems in terms of suitable maps (called premorphisms) between the corresponding ordered Bratteli diagrams, and we show that every factor map between two Cantor minimal systems is obtained in this way. Moreover, solving a natural question, we are able to characterize Glasner and Weiss’s notion of weak orbit equivalence of Cantor minimal systems in terms of the corresponding C*-algebra crossed products.