Bishop [2]has given a proof of Birkhoff's ergodic theorem by establishing upcrossing inequalities similar to those of Doob. Such inequalities can be considered as quantitative improvements of convergence theorems: while convergence a.e. means that the number of upcrossings of any interval is a.e. finite, they assert integrability and prove bounds for the integrals. The main point of this paper is to prove upcrossing inequalities for the class of subadditive superstationary processes introduced by Abid [1] as a common generalization of Kingman's [5] subadditive stationary processes and Krengel's [6] superstationary processes. We make use of ideas of Smeltzer [7] who handled the subadditive stationary discrete parameter case in his unpublished thesis. In the continuous parameter case our upcrossing inequality requires more restrictive conditions than the corresponding convergence theorem, due to Hachem [3]. We actually show by example that the number of upcrossings need not be integrable under the assumptions of Hachem even for additive stationary processes.

We generalize Berg’s notion of quasi-disjointness to actions of countable groups and prove that every measurably distal system is quasi-disjoint from every measure-preserving system. As a corollary, we obtain easy to check necessary and sufficient conditions for two systems to be disjoint, provided one of them is measurably distal. We also obtain a Wiener–Wintner-type theorem for countable amenable groups with distal weights and applications to weighted multiple ergodic averages and multiple recurrence.

Let denote the class of transformations with the weak Pinsker property, and let []m denote the class of transformations m-equivalent to some member of , where m is an entropy-preserving size. We show that if T is a factor of an element of []m, then T ∈ []m, and if T is an m-limit of elements of []m, then T ∈ []m.

A Birkhoff billiard is a system describing the inertial motion of a point mass inside a strictly convex planar domain, with elastic reflections at the boundary. The study of the associated dynamics is profoundly intertwined with the geometric properties of the domain: while it is evident how the shape determines the dynamics, a more subtle and difficult question is the extent to which the knowledge of the dynamics allows one to reconstruct the shape of the domain. This translates into many intriguing inverse problems and unanswered rigidity questions, which have been the focus of very active research in recent decades. In this paper we describe some of these questions, along with their connection to other problems in analysis and geometry, with particular emphasis on recent results obtained by the authors and their collaborators.

We investigate tameness of Toeplitz shifts. By introducing the notion of extended Bratteli–Vershik diagrams, we show that such shifts with finite Toeplitz rank are tame if and only if there are at most countably many orbits of singular fibres over the maximal equicontinuous factor. The ideas are illustrated using the class of substitution shifts. A body of elaborate examples shows that the assumptions of our results cannot be relaxed.

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.

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.

A function which is transcendental and meromorphic in the plane has at least two singular values. On the one hand, if a meromorphic function has exactly two singular values, it is known that the Hausdorff dimension of the escaping set can only be either $2$ or $1/2$ . On the other hand, the Hausdorff dimension of escaping sets of Speiser functions can attain every number in $[0,2]$ (cf. [M. Aspenberg and W. Cui. Hausdorff dimension of escaping sets of meromorphic functions. Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 374(9) (2021), 6145–6178]). In this paper, we show that number of singular values which is needed to attain every Hausdorff dimension of escaping sets is not more than $4$ .

We introduce some notions of conditional mean dimension for a factor map between two topological dynamical systems and discuss their properties. With the help of these notions, we obtain an inequality to estimate the mean dimension of an extension system. The conditional mean dimension for G-extensions is computed. We also exhibit some applications in dynamical embedding problems.

For a class of robustly transitive diffeomorphisms on ${\mathbb T}^4$ introduced by Shub [Topologically transitive diffeomorphisms of $T^4$. Proceedings of the Symposium on Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems (Lecture notes in Mathematics, 206). Ed. D. Chillingworth. Springer, Berlin, 1971, pp. 39–40], satisfying an additional bunching condition, we show that there exists a $C^2$ open and $C^r$ dense subset ${\mathcal U}^r$, $2\leq r\leq \infty $, such that any two hyperbolic points of $g\in {\mathcal U}^r$ with stable index $2$ are homoclinically related. As a consequence, every $g\in {\mathcal U}^r$ admits a unique homoclinic class associated to the hyperbolic periodic points with index $2$, and this homoclinic class coincides with the whole ambient manifold. Moreover, every $g\in {\mathcal U}^r$ admits at most one measure of maximal entropy, and every $g\in {\mathcal U}^{\infty }$ admits a unique measure of maximal entropy.