The purpose of this paper is to present some simple examples that are hyperbolic everywhere except at one point, but which do not admit SBR measures. Each example has a fixed point at which the larger eigenvalue is equal to one and the smaller eigenvalue is less than one.

A self-contained proof of the KAM theorem in the Thirring model is discussed, completely relaxing the ‘strong diophantine property’ hypothesis used previously.

It is not known in general whether any mixing sofic system is the limit set of some one-dimensional cellular automaton. We address two aspects of this question. We prove first that any mixing almost of finite type (AFT) sofic system with a receptive fixed point is the limit set of a cellular automaton, under which it is attained in finite time. The AFT condition is not necessary: we also give examples of non-AFT sofic systems having the same properties. Finally, we show that near Markov sofic systems (a subclass of AFT sofic systems) cannot be obtained as limit sets of cellular automata at infinity.

We consider Anosov flows on closed 3-manifolds. We show that if such a flow admits a weak foliation whose lifting in the universal covering is a product foliation, thenit is characterized up to topological equivalence by its weak stable foliation up to topological conjugacy. As a corollary we obtain that, up to topological equivalence and finite coverings, suspensions and geodesic flows are the unique Anosov flows on closed 3-manifolds whose weak stable foliations are transversely projective.

Let X be a locally connected locally compact metric space and f: X → X a continuous map. Let A be a compact transitive set under f. If A is asymptotically stable, then it has finitely many connected components, which are cyclically permuted. If it is Liapunov stable, then A may have infinitely many connected components. Our main result states that these form a Cantor set on which f is topologically conjugate to an adding machine. A number of consequences are derived, including a complete classification of compact transitive sets for continuous maps of the interval and the Liapunov instability of the invariant Cantor set of Denjoy maps of the circle.

For a smooth diffeomorphism f in ℝn+2, which possesses an invariant n-torus , such that the restriction f is topologically conjugate to an irrational rotation, we define a number which represents the way the normal bundle to the torus asymptotically wraps around . We prove that this number is a topological invariant among volume-preserving maps. This result can be seen as a generalization of a theorem by Naishul, for which we give a simple proof.

We consider a compact metric zero-dimensional abelian group X and mixing ℤ2 (or ℤ2+) actions by automorphisms (or endomorphisms). We provide various instances of cohomological triviality and rigidity for cocycles taking values in finite groups.

It is shown that for certain classes of S-unimodal maps with aperiodic kneading sequences, the topological conjugacies are also quasisymmetric. This includes some infinitely renormalizable polynomials of unbounded type.

Let A1, A2,…,Ak be a finite set of contractive, affine, invertible self-mappings of R2. A compact subset Λ of R2 is said to be self-affine with affinitiesA1, A2,…,Ak if

It is known [8] that for any such set of contractive affine mappings there is a unique (compact) SA set with these affinities. When the affine mappings A1, A2,…,Ak are similarity transformations, the set Λ is said to be self-similar. Self-similar sets are well understood, at least when the images Ai(Λ) have ‘small’ overlap: there is a simple and explicit formula for the Hausdorff and box dimensions [12, 10]; these are always equal; and the δ-dimensional Hausdorff measure of such a set (where δ is the Hausdorff dimension) is always positive and finite.

We give sufficient conditions for a group of homeomorphisms of a compact Hausdorff space to have an invariant probability measure. For a complex projective space CPn we give a necessary condition for a subgroup of Aut(CPn) to have an invariant probability measure. We discuss two approaches to Auslander's conjecture.

Sullivan's scaling function provides a complete description of the smooth conjugacy classes of cookie-cutters. However, for smooth conjugacy classes of Markov maps on a train track, such as expanding circle maps and train track mappings induced by pseudo-Anosov systems, the generalisation of the scaling function suffers from a deficiency. It is difficult to characterise the structure of the set of those scaling functions which correspond to smooth mappings. We introduce a new invariant for Markov maps called the solenoid function. We prove that for any prescribed topological structure, there is a one-to-one correspondence between smooth conjugacy classes of smooth Markov maps and pseudo-Hölder solenoid functions. This gives a characterisation of the moduli space for smooth conjugacy classes of smooth Markov maps. For smooth expanding maps of the circle with degree d this moduli space is the space of Hölder continuous functions on the space {0,…, d − 1}ℕ satisfying the matching condition.

We describe an open set A of arcs of diffeomorphisms bifurcating through the creation of heterodimensional cycles for which every diffeomorphism after the bifurcation is nonhyperbolic or unstable. We also prove that generically in A the borning nonwandering set is transitive and local maximal for a full (Lebesgue) set of parameter values.

If (X, f) is a compact metric, finite-dimensional dynamical system with a zero-dimensional set of periodic points, then there is a zero-dimensional compact metric dynamical system (C, g) and a finite-to-one (in fact, at most (n + l)n-to-one) surjection h: C → X such that h o g = f o h. An example shows that the requirement on the set of periodic points is necessary.

We prove that unimodal Fibonacci maps with negative Schwarzian derivative and a critical point of order ℓ have a finite absolutely continuous invariant measure if ℓ ∈ (1 ℓ1) where ℓ1 is some number strictly greater than 2. This extends results of Lyubich and Milnor for the case ℓ = 2.

We define a new invariant for symbolic ℤ2-actions, the projective fundamental group. This invariant is the limit of an inverse system of groups, each of which is the fundamental group of a space associated with the ℤ2-action. The limit group measures a kind of long-distance order that is manifested along loops in the plane, and roughly speaking bears the same relation to the mixing properties of the ℤ2-action that π1; of a topological space bears to π0. The projective fundamental group is invariant under topological conjugacy. We calculate this invariant for several important examples of ℤ2-actions, and use it to prove non-existence of certain constant-to-one factor maps between two-dimensional subshifts. Subshifts that have the same entropy and periodic point data can have different projective fundamental groups.

For the Ising model with rational parameters we show how to construct a subshift of finite type that is equivalent to this Ising model, in that the translation invariant Gibbs measures for the Ising model and the measures of maximal entropy for the subshift of finite type can be identified in a natural way. This is generalized to the non-translation invariant case as well. We also show how to construct, given any H > 0, an ergodic measure of maximal entropy for a subshift of finite type and a continuous factor, such that the factor has entropy H.

We introduce an ‘entropy’ hm(f) for a continuous mapping of a compact metric space to itself which is denned in terms of (n, ∈)-separated subsets of inverse images of individual points. This invariant is compared with the inverse-image entropy h_(f) introduced recently by Langevin and Walczak. The two main results are: (1) the inequality hm(f) ≤ h(f) ≤ hm(f) + h_(f) relating hm, h_ and the topological entropy h(f); (2) if pseudo-orbits are used in place of orbits in the definition of hm then the quantity that results is equal to the topological entropy. We actually establish an inequality that at least formally is slightly stronger than (1) by defining a variant of h_ which we call hi; it is trivial to show that hi ≤ h_, and we show that h ≤ hi + hm, from which (1) follows.

In this paper we extend to a very general context Newhouse's phenomenon concerning the persistence of homoclinic tangencies and the coexistence of infinitely many sinks. This is done using the corresponding results in codimension one recently provedby J. Palis and M. Viana, and in a reduction of codimension in the unfolding of homoclinic tangencies developed in the present paper.

Systems possessing symmetries often admit heteroclinic cycles that persist under perturbations that respect the symmetry. The asymptotic stability of such cycles has previously been studied on an ad hoc basis by many authors. Sufficient conditions, but usually not necessary conditions, for the stability of these cycles have been obtained via a variety of different techniques.

We begin a systematic investigation into the asymptotic stability of such cycles. A general sufficient condition for asymptotic stability is obtained, together with algebraic criteria for deciding when this condition is also necessary. These criteria are always satisfied in ℝ3 and often satisfied in higher dimensions. We end by applying our results to several higher-dimensional examples that occur in mode interactions with O(2) symmetry.

We study the integrability of intermediate distributions for Anosov diffeomorphisms and provide an example of a C∞-Anosov diffeomorphism on a three-dimensional torus whose intermediate stable foliation has leaves that admit only a finite number of derivatives. We also show that this phenomenon is quite abundant. In dimension four or higher this can happen even if the Lyapunov exponents at periodic orbits are constant.