Consider a topologically transitive countable Markov shift $\Sigma $ and a summable locally constant potential $\phi $ with finite Gurevich pressure and $\mathrm {Var}_1(\phi ) < \infty $. We prove the existence of the limit $\lim _{t \to \infty } \mu _t$ in the weak$^\star $ topology, where $\mu _t$ is the unique equilibrium state associated to the potential $t\phi $. In addition, we present examples where the limit at zero temperature exists for potentials satisfying more general conditions.

We prove that for any non-degenerate dendrite D, there exist topologically mixing maps $F : D \to D$ and $f : [0, 1] \to [0, 1]$ such that the natural extensions (as known as shift homeomorphisms) $\sigma _F$ and $\sigma _f$ are conjugate, and consequently the corresponding inverse limits are homeomorphic. Moreover, the map f does not depend on the dendrite D and can be selected so that the inverse limit $\underleftarrow {\lim } (D,F)$ is homeomorphic to the pseudo-arc. The result extends to any finite number of dendrites. Our work is motivated by, but independent of, the recent result of the first and third author on conjugation of Lozi and Hénon maps to natural extensions of dendrite maps.

We find generalized conformal measures and equilibrium states for random dynamics generated by Ruelle expanding maps, under which the dynamics exhibits exponential decay of correlations. This extends results by Baladi [Correlation spectrum of quenched and annealed equilibrium states for random expanding maps. Comm. Math. Phys. 186 (1997), 671–700] and Carvalho et al [Semigroup actions of expanding maps. J. Stat. Phys. 116(1) (2017), 114–136], where the randomness is driven by an independent and identically distributed process and the phase space is assumed to be compact. We give applications in the context of weighted non-autonomous iterated function systems, free semigroup actions and introduce a boundary of equilibria for not necessarily free semigroup actions.

We derive upper and lower bounds for the Assouad and lower dimensions of self-affine measures in $\mathbb {R}^d$ generated by diagonal matrices and satisfying suitable separation conditions. The upper and lower bounds always coincide for $d=2,3$, yielding precise explicit formulae for those dimensions. Moreover, there are easy-to-check conditions guaranteeing that the bounds coincide for $d \geqslant 4$. An interesting consequence of our results is that there can be a ‘dimension gap’ for such self-affine constructions, even in the plane. That is, we show that for some self-affine carpets of ‘Barański type’ the Assouad dimension of all associated self-affine measures strictly exceeds the Assouad dimension of the carpet by some fixed $\delta>0$ depending only on the carpet. We also provide examples of self-affine carpets of ‘Barański type’ where there is no dimension gap and in fact the Assouad dimension of the carpet is equal to the Assouad dimension of a carefully chosen self-affine measure.

In this paper, we focus on dynamical properties of (real) convex projective surfaces. Our main theorem provides an asymptotic formula for the number of free homotopy classes with roughly the same renormalized Hilbert length for two distinct convex real projective structures. The correlation number in this asymptotic formula is characterized in terms of their Manhattan curve. We show that the correlation number is not uniformly bounded away from zero on the space of pairs of hyperbolic surfaces, answering a question of Schwartz and Sharp. In contrast, we provide examples of diverging sequences, defined via cubic rays, along which the correlation number stays larger than a uniform strictly positive constant. In the last section, we extend the correlation theorem to Hitchin representations.

We construct one-dimensional foliations which are subfoliations of two-dimensional foliations in $3$ -manifolds. The subfoliation is by quasigeodesics in each two-dimensional leaf, but it is not funnel: not all quasigeodesics share a common ideal point in most leaves.

We consider a robust class of random non-uniformly expanding local homeomorphisms and Hölder continuous potentials with small variation. For each element of this class we develop the thermodynamical formalism and prove the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states among non-uniformly expanding measures. Moreover, we show that these equilibrium states and the random topological pressure vary continuously in this setting.

For a subshift $(X, \sigma _{X})$ and a subadditive sequence ${\mathcal F}=\{\log f_{n}\}_{n=1}^{\infty }$ on X, we study equivalent conditions for the existence of $h\in C(X)$ such that $\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }(1/{n})\int \log f_{n}\, d\kern-1pt\mu =\int h \,d\kern-1pt\mu $ for every invariant measure $\mu $ on X. For this purpose, we first we study necessary and sufficient conditions for ${\mathcal F}$ to be an asymptotically additive sequence in terms of certain properties for periodic points. For a factor map $\pi : X\rightarrow Y$ , where $(X, \sigma _{X})$ is an irreducible shift of finite type and $(Y, \sigma _{Y})$ is a subshift, applying our results and the results obtained by Cuneo [Additive, almost additive and asymptotically additive potential sequences are equivalent. Comm. Math. Phys. 37 (3) (2020), 2579–2595] on asymptotically additive sequences, we study the existence of h with regard to a subadditive sequence associated to a relative pressure function. This leads to a characterization of the existence of a certain type of continuous compensation function for a factor map between subshifts. As an application, we study the projection $\pi \mu $ of an invariant weak Gibbs measure $\mu $ for a continuous function on an irreducible shift of finite type.

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 $({1}/{n})\log R_n$ .

For $k \geq 2$ , we prove that in a $C^{1}$ -open and $C^{k}$ -dense set of some classes of $C^{k}$ -Anosov flows, all Lyapunov exponents have multiplicity one with respect to appropriate measures. The classes are geodesic flows with equilibrium states of Holder-continuous potentials, volume-preserving flows, and all fiber-bunched Anosov flows with equilibrium states of Holder-continuous potentials.

Every Anosov flow on a 3-manifold is associated to a bifoliated plane (a plane endowed with two transverse foliations $F^s$ and $F^u$ ) which reflects the normal structure of the flow endowed with the center-stable and center-unstable foliations. A flow is $\mathbb{R}$ -covered if $F^s$ (or equivalently $F^u$ ) is trivial. On the other hand, from any Anosov flow one can build infinitely many others by Dehn–Goodman–Fried surgeries. This paper investigates how these surgeries modify the bifoliated plane. We first observe that surgeries along orbits corresponding to disjoint simple closed geodesics do not affect the bifoliated plane of the geodesic flow of a hyperbolic surface (Theorem 1). Analogously, for any non- $\mathbb{R}$ -covered Anosov flow, surgeries along pivot periodic orbits do not affect the branching structure of its bifoliated plane (Theorem 2). Next, we consider the set $\mathcal{S}urg(A)$ of Anosov flows obtained by Dehn–Goodman–Fried surgeries from the suspension flow $X_A$ of any hyperbolic matrix $A \in SL(2,\mathbb{Z})$ . Fenley proved that performing only positive (or negative) surgeries on $X_A$ leads to $\mathbb{R}$ -covered Anosov flows. We study here Anosov flows obtained by a combination of positive and negative surgeries on $X_A$ . Among other results, we build non- $\mathbb{R}$ -covered Anosov flows on hyperbolic manifolds. Furthermore, we show that given any flow $X\in \mathcal{S}urg(A)$ there exists $\epsilon>0$ such that every flow obtained from $X$ by a non-trivial surgery along any $\epsilon$ -dense periodic orbit $\gamma$ is $\mathbb{R}$ -covered (Theorem 4). Analogously, for any flow $X \in \mathcal{S}urg(A)$ there exist periodic orbits $\gamma_+,\gamma_-$ such that every flow obtained from $X$ by surgeries with distinct signs on $\gamma_+$ and $\gamma_-$ is non- $\mathbb{R}$ -covered (Theorem 5).

We prove the convergence and ergodicity of a wide class of real and higher-dimensional continued fraction algorithms, including folded and $\alpha $ -type variants of complex, quaternionic, octonionic, and Heisenberg continued fractions, which we combine under the framework of Iwasawa continued fractions. The proof is based on the interplay of continued fractions and hyperbolic geometry, the ergodicity of geodesic flow in associated modular manifolds, and a variation on the notion of geodesic coding that we refer to as geodesic marking. As a corollary of our study of markable geodesics, we obtain a generalization of Serret’s tail-equivalence theorem for almost all points. The results are new even in the case of some real and complex continued fractions.

In this article, we continue the structural study of factor maps between symbolic dynamical systems and the relative thermodynamic formalism. Here, one is studying a factor map from a shift of finite type X (equipped with a potential function) to a sofic shift Z, equipped with a shift-invariant measure $\nu $ . We study relative equilibrium states, that is, shift-invariant measures on X that push forward under the factor map to $\nu $ which maximize the relative pressure: the relative entropy plus the integral of $\phi $ . In this paper, we establish a new connection to multiplicative ergodic theory by relating these factor triples to a cocycle of Ruelle–Perron–Frobenius operators, and showing that the principal Lyapunov exponent of this cocycle is the relative pressure; and the dimension of the leading Oseledets space is equal to the number of measures of relative maximal entropy, counted with a previously identified concept of multiplicity.

A blender for a surface endomorphism is a hyperbolic basic set for which the union of the local unstable manifolds robustly contains an open set. Introduced by Bonatti and Díaz in the 1990s, blenders turned out to have many powerful applications to differentiable dynamics. In particular, a generalization in terms of jets, called parablenders, allowed Berger to prove the existence of generic families displaying robustly infinitely many sinks. In this paper we introduce analogous notions in a measurable setting. We define an almost blender as a hyperbolic basic set for which a prevalent perturbation has a local unstable set having positive Lebesgue measure. Almost parablenders are defined similarly in terms of jets. We study families of endomorphisms of $\mathbb {R}^2$ leaving invariant the continuation of a hyperbolic basic set. When an inequality involving the entropy and the maximal contraction along stable manifolds is satisfied, we obtain an almost blender or parablender. This answers partially a conjecture of Berger, and complements previous works on the construction of blenders by Avila, Crovisier, and Wilkinson or by Moreira and Silva. The proof is based on thermodynamic formalism: following works of Mihailescu, Simon, Solomyak, and Urbański, we study families of skew-products and we give conditions under which these maps have limit sets of positive measure inside their fibers.

In this paper we study Zimmer's conjecture for $C^{1}$ actions of lattice subgroup of a higher-rank simple Lie group with finite center on compact manifolds. We show that when the rank of an uniform lattice is larger than the dimension of the manifold, then the action factors through a finite group. For lattices in ${\rm SL}(n, {{\mathbb {R}}})$, the dimensional bound is sharp.

We study approximation schemes for shift spaces over a finite alphabet using (pseudo)metrics connected to Ornstein’s ${\bar d}$ metric. This leads to a class of shift spaces we call ${\bar d}$ -approachable. A shift space is ${\bar d}$ -approachable when its canonical sequence of Markov approximations converges to it also in the ${\bar d}$ sense. We give a topological characterization of chain-mixing ${\bar d}$ -approachable shift spaces. As an application we provide a new criterion for entropy density of ergodic measures. Entropy density of a shift space means that every invariant measure $\mu $ of such a shift space is the weak $^*$ limit of a sequence $\mu _n$ of ergodic measures with the corresponding sequence of entropies $h(\mu _n)$ converging to $h(\mu )$ . We prove ergodic measures are entropy-dense for every shift space that can be approximated in the ${\bar d}$ pseudometric by a sequence of transitive sofic shifts. This criterion can be applied to many examples that were beyond the reach of previously known techniques including hereditary $\mathscr {B}$ -free shifts and some minimal or proximal systems. The class of symbolic dynamical systems covered by our results includes also shift spaces where entropy density was established previously using the (almost) specification property.

Motivated by fractal geometry of self-affine carpets and sponges, Feng and Huang [J. Math. Pures Appl. 106(9) (2016), 411–452] introduced weighted topological entropy and pressure for factor maps between dynamical systems, and proved variational principles for them. We introduce a new approach to this theory. Our new definitions of weighted topological entropy and pressure are very different from the original definitions of Feng and Huang. The equivalence of the two definitions seems highly non-trivial. Their equivalence can be seen as a generalization of the dimension formula for the Bedford–McMullen carpet in purely topological terms.

Recall that two geodesics in a negatively curved surface S are of the same type if their free homotopy classes differ by a homeomorphism of the surface. In this note we study the distribution in the unit tangent bundle of the geodesics of fixed type, proving that they are asymptotically equidistributed with respect to a certain measure ${\mathfrak {m}}^S$ on $T^1S$ . We study a few properties of this measure, showing for example that it distinguishes between hyperbolic surfaces.

This paper develops new techniques for studying smooth dynamical systems in the presence of a Carnot–Carathéodory metric. Principally, we employ the theory of Margulis and Mostow, Métivier, Mitchell, and Pansu on tangent cones to establish resonances between Lyapunov exponents. We apply these results in three different settings. First, we explore rigidity properties of smooth dominated splittings for Anosov diffeomorphisms and flows via associated smooth Carnot–Carathéodory metrics. Second, we obtain local rigidity properties of higher hyperbolic rank metrics in a neighborhood of a locally symmetric one. For the latter application we also prove structural stability of the Brin–Pesin asymptotic holonomy group for frame flows. Finally, we obtain local rigidity properties for uniform lattice actions on the ideal boundary of quaternionic and octonionic symmetric spaces.