We show that a class of higher-dimensional hyperbolic endomorphisms admit absolutely continuous invariant probabilities whose densities are regular and vary differentiably with respect to the dynamical system. The maps we consider are skew-products given by $T(x,y) = (E (x), C(x,y))$, where E is an expanding map of $\mathbb {T}^u$ and C is a contracting map on each fiber. If $\inf |\!\det DT| \inf \| (D_yC)^{-1}\| ^{-2s}>1$ for some ${s<r-(({u+d})/{2}+1)}$, $r \geq 2$, and T satisfies a transversality condition between overlaps of iterates of T (a condition which we prove to be $C^r$-generic under mild assumptions), then the SRB measure $\mu _T$ of T is absolutely continuous and its density $h_T$ belongs to the Sobolev space $H^s({\mathbb {T}}^u\times {\mathbb {R}}^d)$. When $s> {u}/{2}$, it is also valid that the density $h_T$ is differentiable with respect to T. Similar results are proved for thermodynamical quantities for potentials close to the geometric potential.

We prove a joint partial equidistribution result for common perpendiculars with given density on equidistributing equidistant hypersurfaces, towards a measure supported on truncated stable leaves. We recover a result of Marklof on the joint partial equidistribution of Farey fractions at a given density, and give several analogous arithmetic applications, including in Bruhat–Tits trees.

Bratteli–Vershik models of compact, invertible zero-dimensional systems have been well studied. We take up such a study for polygonal billiards on the hyperbolic plane, thus considering these models beyond zero-dimensions. We describe the associated Bratteli models and show that these billiard dynamics can be described by Vershik maps.

Let $\Sigma $ be a closed hyperbolic surface. We study, for fixed g, the asymptotics of the number of those periodic geodesics in $\Sigma $ having at most length L and which can be written as the product of g commutators. The basic idea is to reduce these results to being able to count critical realizations of trivalent graphs in $\Sigma $. In the appendix, we use the same strategy to give a proof of Huber’s geometric prime number theorem.

We study equilibrium states for a class of non-uniformly expanding skew products, and show how a family of fiberwise transfer operators can be used to define the conditional measures along fibers of the product. We prove that the pushforward of the equilibrium state onto the base of the product is itself an equilibrium state for a Hölder potential defined via these fiberwise transfer operators.

We introduce a new method of constructing Birkhoff sections for pseudo-Anosov flows, which uses the connection between pseudo-Anosov flows and veering triangulations. This method allows for explicit constructions, as well as control over the Birkhoff section in terms of its Euler characteristic and the complexity of the boundary orbits. In particular, we show that any transitive pseudo-Anosov flow has a Birkhoff section with two boundary components.

Katok [Lyapunov exponents, entropy and periodic points of diffeomorphisms. Publ. Math. Inst. Hautes Études Sci. 51 (1980), 137–173] conjectured that every $C^{2}$ diffeomorphism f on a Riemannian manifold has the intermediate entropy property, that is, for any constant $c \in [0, h_{\mathrm {top}}(f))$, there exists an ergodic measure $\mu $ of f satisfying $h_{\mu }(f)=c$. In this paper, we obtain a conditional intermediate metric entropy property and two conditional intermediate Birkhoff average properties for basic sets of flows that characterize the refined roles of ergodic measures in the invariant ones. In this process, we establish a ‘multi-horseshoe’ entropy-dense property and use it to get the goal combined with conditional variational principles. We also obtain the same result for singular hyperbolic attractors.

We prove that under restrictions on the fiber, any fibered partially hyperbolic system over a nilmanifold is leaf conjugate to a smooth model that is isometric on the fibers and descends to a hyperbolic nilmanifold automorphism on the base. One ingredient is a result of independent interest generalizing a result of Hiraide: an Anosov homeomorphism of a nilmanifold is topologically conjugate to a hyperbolic nilmanifold automorphism.

We give a $C^1$-perturbation technique for ejecting an a priori given finite set of periodic points preserving a given finite set of homo/heteroclinic intersections from a chain recurrence class of a periodic point. The technique is first stated under a simpler setting called a Markov iterated function system, a two-dimensional iterated function system in which the compositions are chosen in a Markovian way. Then we apply the result to the setting of three-dimensional partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms.

We study a class of ordinary differential equations with a non-Lipschitz point singularity that admits non-unique solutions through this point. As a selection criterion, we introduce stochastic regularizations depending on a parameter $\nu $: the regularized dynamics is globally defined for each $\nu> 0$, and the original singular system is recovered in the limit of vanishing $\nu $. We prove that this limit yields a unique statistical solution independent of regularization when the deterministic system possesses a chaotic attractor having a physical measure with the convergence to equilibrium property. In this case, solutions become spontaneously stochastic after passing through the singularity: they are selected randomly with an intrinsic probability distribution.

For every $r\in \mathbb {N}_{\geq 2}\cup \{\infty \}$, we prove a $C^r$-orbit connecting lemma for dynamically coherent and plaque expansive partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms with one-dimensional orientation preserving center bundle. To be precise, for such a diffeomorphism f, if a point y is chain attainable from x through pseudo-orbits, then for any neighborhood U of x and any neighborhood V of y, there exist true orbits from U to V by arbitrarily $C^r$-small perturbations. As a consequence, we prove that for $C^r$-generic diffeomorphisms in this class, periodic points are dense in the chain recurrent set, and chain transitivity implies transitivity.

In this paper, we give necessary conditions for an $N$-expansive homeomorphism of a compact metric space to be nonchaotic in the Li–Yorke sense. As application we give a partial answer to a conjecture in [2].

While on the one hand, chaotic dynamical systems can be predicted for all time given exact knowledge of an initial state, they are also in many cases rapidly mixing, meaning that smooth probabilistic information (quantified by measures) on the system’s state has negligible value for predicting the long-term future. However, an understanding of the long-term predictive value of intermediate kinds of probabilistic information is necessary in various physical problems, and largely remains lacking. Of particular interest in data assimilation and linear response theory are the conditional measures of the Sinai–Ruelle–Bowen (SRB) measure on zero sets of general smooth functions of the phase space. In this paper we give rigorous and numerical evidence that such measures generically converge back under the dynamics to the full SRB measures, exponentially quickly. We call this property conditional mixing. While conditional mixing typically cannot be proven from standard transfer operator theory, we will prove that conditional mixing holds in a class of generalized baker’s maps, and demonstrate it numerically in some non-Markovian piecewise hyperbolic maps. Conditional mixing provides a natural limit on the effectiveness of long-term forecasting of chaotic systems via partial observations, and appears key to proving the existence of linear response outside the setting of smooth uniform hyperbolicity.

We show convergence of small eigenvalues for geometrically finite hyperbolic n-manifolds under strong limits. For a class of convergent convex sets in a strongly convergent sequence of Kleinian groups, we use the spectral gap of the limit manifold and the exponentially mixing property of the geodesic flow along the strongly convergent sequence to find asymptotically uniform counting formulas for the number of orthogeodesics between the convex sets. In particular, this provides asymptotically uniform counting formulas (with respect to length) for orthogeodesics between converging Margulis tubes, geodesic loops based at converging basepoints, and primitive closed geodesics.

Given a dynamical system, we prove that the shortest distance between two n-orbits scales like n to a power even when the system has slow mixing properties, thus building and improving on results of Barros, Liao and the first author [On the shortest distance between orbits and the longest common substring problem. Adv. Math. 344 (2019), 311–339]. We also extend these results to flows. Finally, we give an example for which the shortest distance between two orbits has no scaling limit.

Reflection in a strictly convex bounded planar billiard acts on the space of oriented lines and preserves a standard area form. A caustic is a curve C whose tangent lines are reflected by the billiard to lines tangent to C. The famous Birkhoff conjecture states that the only strictly convex billiards with a foliation by closed caustics near the boundary are ellipses. By Lazutkin’s theorem, there always exists a Cantor family of closed caustics approaching the boundary. In the present paper, we deal with an open billiard, whose boundary is a strictly convex embedded (non-closed) curve $\gamma $. We prove that there exists a domain U adjacent to $\gamma $ from the convex side and a $C^\infty $-smooth foliation of $U\cup \gamma $ whose leaves are $\gamma $ and (non-closed) caustics of the billiard. This generalizes a previous result by Melrose on the existence of a germ of foliation as above. We show that there exists a continuum of above foliations by caustics whose germs at each point in $\gamma $ are pairwise different. We prove a more general version of this statement for $\gamma $ being an (immersed) arc. It also applies to a billiard bounded by a closed strictly convex curve $\gamma $ and yields infinitely many ‘immersed’ foliations by immersed caustics. For the proof of the above results, we state and prove their analogue for a special class of area-preserving maps generalizing billiard reflections: the so-called $C^{\infty }$-lifted strongly billiard-like maps. We also prove a series of results on conjugacy of billiard maps near the boundary for open curves of the above type.

For smooth random dynamical systems we consider the quenched linear and higher-order response of equivariant physical measures to perturbations of the random dynamics. We show that the spectral perturbation theory of Gouëzel, Keller and Liverani [28, 33], which has been applied to deterministic systems with great success, may be adapted to study random systems that possess good mixing properties. As a consequence, we obtain general linear and higher-order response results, as well as the differentiability of the variance in quenched central limit theorems (CLTs), for random dynamical systems (RDSs) that we then apply to random Anosov diffeomorphisms and random U(1) extensions of expanding maps. We emphasize that our results apply to random dynamical systems over a general ergodic base map, and are obtained without resorting to infinite-dimensional multiplicative ergodic theory.

Cheng and Newhouse (Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 25 (2005), 1091–1113) proved a variational principle for topological preimage entropy $h_{\mathrm {pre}}(f)$:

$$ \begin{align*} h_{\mathrm{pre}}(f)=\sup_{\mu\in\mathcal{M}(X,f)}h_{\mathrm{pre},\mu}(f). \end{align*} $$

Unfortunately, we show in this note that this variational principle is not true.

In this paper, we consider the convergence rate with respect to Wasserstein distance in the invariance principle for deterministic non-uniformly hyperbolic systems. Our results apply to uniformly hyperbolic systems and large classes of non-uniformly hyperbolic systems including intermittent maps, Viana maps, unimodal maps and others. Furthermore, as a non-trivial application to the homogenization problem, we investigate the Wasserstein convergence rate of a fast–slow discrete deterministic system to a stochastic differential equation.

We develop a geometric method to establish the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states associated to some Hölder potentials for center isometries (as are regular elements of Anosov actions), in particular, the entropy maximizing measure and the SRB measure. A characterization of equilibrium states in terms of their disintegrations along stable and unstable foliations is also given. Finally, we show that the resulting system is isomorphic to a Bernoulli scheme.