We construct a sofic approximation of ${\mathbb F}_2\times {\mathbb F}_2$ that is not essentially a ‘branched cover’ of a sofic approximation by homomorphisms. This answers a question of L. Bowen.

For an ascending HNN-extension $G*_{\psi }$ of a finitely generated abelian group G, we study how a synchronization between the geometry of the group and weak periodicity of a configuration in $\mathcal {A}^{G*_{\psi }}$ forces global constraints on it, as well as in subshifts containing it. A particular case are Baumslag–Solitar groups $\mathrm {BS}(1,N)$ , $N\ge 2$ , for which our results imply that a $\mathrm {BS}(1,N)$ -subshift of finite type which contains a configuration with period $a^{N^\ell }\!, \ell \ge 0$ , must contain a strongly periodic configuration with monochromatic $\mathbb {Z}$ -sections. Then we study proper n-colorings, $n\ge 3$ , of the (right) Cayley graph of $\mathrm {BS}(1,N)$ , estimating the entropy of the associated subshift together with its mixing properties. We prove that $\mathrm {BS}(1,N)$ admits a frozen n-coloring if and only if $n=3$ . We finally suggest generalizations of the latter results to n-colorings of ascending HNN-extensions of finitely generated abelian groups.

Let f be a smooth symplectic diffeomorphism of ${\mathbb R}^2$ admitting a (non-split) separatrix associated to a hyperbolic fixed point. We prove that if f is a perturbation of the time-1 map of a symplectic autonomous vector field, this separatrix is accumulated by a positive measure set of invariant circles. However, we provide examples of smooth symplectic diffeomorphisms with a Lyapunov unstable non-split separatrix that are not accumulated by invariant circles.

We characterize topological conjugacy classes of one-sided topological Markov shifts in terms of the associated Cuntz–Krieger algebras and their gauge actions with potentials.

We prove that all invariant random subgroups of the lamplighter group L are co-sofic. It follows that L is permutation stable, providing an example of an infinitely presented such group. Our proof applies more generally to all permutational wreath products of finitely generated abelian groups. We rely on the pointwise ergodic theorem for amenable groups.

We prove the central limit theorem of random variables induced by distances to Brownian paths and Green functions on the universal cover of Riemannian manifolds of finite volume with pinched negative curvature. We further provide some ergodic properties of Brownian motions and an application of the central limit theorem to the dynamics of geodesic flows in pinched negative curvature.

A Cantor minimal system is of finite topological rank if it has a Bratteli–Vershik representation whose number of vertices per level is uniformly bounded. We prove that if the topological rank of a minimal dynamical system on a Cantor set is finite, then all its minimal Cantor factors have finite topological rank as well. This gives an affirmative answer to a question posed by Donoso, Durand, Maass, and Petite in full generality. As a consequence, we obtain the dichotomy of Downarowicz and Maass for Cantor factors of finite-rank Cantor minimal systems: they are either odometers or subshifts.

Multiplicative constants are a fundamental tool in the study of maximal representations. In this paper, we show how to extend such notion, and the associated framework, to measurable cocycles theory. As an application of this approach, we define and study the Cartan invariant for measurable $\mathrm{PU}(m,1)$ -cocycles of complex hyperbolic lattices.

A celebrated theorem of Douglas Lind states that a positive real number is equal to the spectral radius of some integral primitive matrix, if and only if, it is a Perron algebraic integer. Given a Perron number p, we prove that there is an integral irreducible matrix with spectral radius p, and with dimension bounded above in terms of the algebraic degree, the ratio of the first two largest Galois conjugates, and arithmetic information about the ring of integers of its number field. This arithmetic information can be taken to be either the discriminant or the minimal Hermite-like thickness. Equivalently, given a Perron number p, there is an irreducible shift of finite type with entropy $\log (p)$ defined as an edge shift on a graph whose number of vertices is bounded above in terms of the aforementioned data.

We study Kakutani equivalence for products of some special flows over rotations with roof function smooth except a singularity at $0\in \mathbb {T}$ . We estimate the Kakutani invariant for products of these flows with different powers of singularities and rotations from a full measure set. As a corollary, we obtain a countable family of pairwise non-Kakutani equivalent products of special flows over rotations.

It is a long-standing open question whether every Polish group that is not locally compact admits a Borel action on a standard Borel space whose associated orbit equivalence relation is not essentially countable. We answer this question positively for the class of all Polish groups that embed in the isometry group of a locally compact metric space. This class contains all non-archimedean Polish groups, for which we provide an alternative proof based on a new criterion for non-essential countability. Finally, we provide the following variant of a theorem of Solecki: every infinite-dimensional Banach space has a continuous action whose orbit equivalence relation is Borel but not essentially countable.

In this paper, we classify the three-dimensional partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms whose stable, unstable, and central distributions $E^s$ , $E^u$ , and $E^c$ are smooth, such that $E^s\oplus E^u$ is a contact distribution, and whose non-wandering set equals the whole manifold. We prove that up to a finite quotient or a finite power, they are smoothly conjugated either to a time-map of an algebraic contact-Anosov flow, or to an affine partially hyperbolic automorphism of a nil- ${\mathrm {Heis}}{(3)}$ -manifold. The rigid geometric structure induced by the invariant distributions plays a fundamental part in the proof.

For a $\psi $ -mixing process $\xi _0,\xi _1,\xi _2,\ldots $ we consider the number ${\mathcal N}_N$ of multiple returns $\{\xi _{q_{i,N}(n)}\in {\Gamma }_N,\, i=1,\ldots ,\ell \}$ to a set ${\Gamma }_N$ for n until either a fixed number N or until the moment $\tau _N$ when another multiple return $\{\xi _{q_{i,N}(n)}\in {\Delta }_N,\, i=1,\ldots ,\ell \}$ , takes place for the first time where ${\Gamma }_N\cap {\Delta }_N=\emptyset $ and $q_{i,N}$ , $i=1,\ldots ,\ell $ are certain functions of n taking on non-negative integer values when n runs from 0 to N. The dependence of $q_{i,N}(n)$ on both n and N is the main novelty of the paper. Under some restrictions on the functions $q_{i,N}$ we obtain Poisson distributions limits of ${\mathcal N}_N$ when counting is until N as $N\to \infty $ and geometric distributions limits when counting is until $\tau _N$ as $N\to \infty $ . We obtain also similar results in the dynamical systems setup considering a $\psi $ -mixing shift T on a sequence space ${\Omega }$ and studying the number of multiple returns $\{ T^{q_{i,N}(n)}{\omega }\in A^a_n,\, i=1,\ldots ,\ell \}$ until the first occurrence of another multiple return $\{ T^{q_{i,N}(n)}{\omega }\in A^b_m,\, i=1,\ldots ,\ell \}$ where $A^a_n,\, A_m^b$ are cylinder sets of length n and m constructed by sequences $a,b\in {\Omega }$ , respectively, and chosen so that their probabilities have the same order.

Many authors have studied the dynamics of hyperbolic transcendental entire functions; these are functions for which the postsingular set is a compact subset of the Fatou set. Equivalently, they are characterized as being expanding. Mihaljević-Brandt studied a more general class of maps for which finitely many of their postsingular points can be in their Julia set, and showed that these maps are also expanding with respect to a certain orbifold metric. In this paper we generalize these ideas further, and consider a class of maps for which the postsingular set is not even bounded. We are able to prove that these maps are also expanding with respect to a suitable orbifold metric, and use this expansion to draw conclusions on the topology and dynamics of the maps. In particular, we generalize existing results for hyperbolic functions, giving criteria for the boundedness of Fatou components and local connectivity of Julia sets. As part of this study, we develop some novel results on hyperbolic orbifold metrics. These are of independent interest, and may have future applications in holomorphic dynamics.

Let f be a Hénon–Sibony map, also known as a regular polynomial automorphism of $\mathbb {C}^k$ , and let $\mu $ be the equilibrium measure of f. In this paper we prove that $\mu $ is exponentially mixing for plurisubharmonic observables.

We outline the flexibility program in smooth dynamics, focusing on flexibility of Lyapunov exponents for volume-preserving diffeomorphisms. We prove flexibility results for Anosov diffeomorphisms admitting dominated splittings into one-dimensional bundles.

In this paper we investigate the Margulis–Ruelle inequality for general Riemannian manifolds (possibly non-compact and with a boundary) and show that it always holds under an integrable condition.

We consider backward filtrations generated by processes coming from deterministic and probabilistic cellular automata. We prove that these filtrations are standard in the classical sense of Vershik’s theory, but we also study them from another point of view that takes into account the measure-preserving action of the shift map, for which each sigma-algebra in the filtrations is invariant. This initiates what we call the dynamical classification of factor filtrations, and the examples we study show that this classification leads to different results.

This paper presents sufficient conditions for a substitution tiling dynamical system of $\mathbb {R}^2$ , generated by a generalized substitution on three letters, to be topologically mixing. These conditions are shown to hold on a large class of tiling substitutions originally presented by Kenyon in 1996. This problem was suggested by Boris Solomyak, and many of the techniques that are used in this paper are based on the work by Kenyon, Sadun, and Solomyak [Topological mixing for substitutions on two letters. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys.25(6) (2005), 1919–1934]. They studied one-dimensional tiling dynamical systems generated by substitutions on two letters and provided similar conditions sufficient to ensure that one-dimensional substitution tiling dynamical systems are topologically mixing. If a tiling dynamical system of $\mathbb {R}^2$ satisfies our conditions (and thus is topologically mixing), we can construct additional topologically mixing tiling dynamical systems of $\mathbb {R}^2$ . By considering the stepped surface constructed from a tiling $T_\sigma $ , we can get a new tiling of $\mathbb {R}^2$ by projecting the surface orthogonally onto an irrational plane through the origin.

We construct an example of a Hamiltonian flow $f^t$ on a four-dimensional smooth manifold $\mathcal {M}$ which after being restricted to an energy surface $\mathcal {M}_e$ demonstrates essential coexistence of regular and chaotic dynamics, that is, there is an open and dense $f^t$ -invariant subset $U\subset \mathcal {M}_e$ such that the restriction $f^t|U$ has non-zero Lyapunov exponents in all directions (except for the direction of the flow) and is a Bernoulli flow while, on the boundary $\partial U$ , which has positive volume, all Lyapunov exponents of the system are zero.