Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 September 2008
This paper represents a contribution to the variational approach to the understanding of the dynamics of exact area-preserving monotone twist maps of the annulus, currently known as the Aubry–Mather theory. The method introduced by Mather to construct invariant measures of Denjoy type is extended to produce almost-periodic measures, having arbitrary rationally independent frequencies, and positive entropy measures, supported within the gaps of Aubry–Mather sets which do not lie on invariant curves. This extension is based on a generalized version of the Percival's Lagrangian and on a new minimization procedure, which also gives a simplified proof of the basic existence theorem for the Aubry–Mather sets.