We consider a smooth area-preserving Anosov diffeomorphism $f\colon \mathbb T^2\rightarrow \mathbb T^2$ homotopic to an Anosov automorphism L of $\mathbb T^2$ . It is known that the positive Lyapunov exponent of f with respect to the normalized Lebesgue measure is less than or equal to the topological entropy of L, which, in addition, is less than or equal to the Lyapunov exponent of f with respect to the probability measure of maximal entropy. Moreover, the equalities only occur simultaneously. We show that these are the only restrictions on these two dynamical invariants.

Given a G-flow X, let $\mathrm{Aut}(G, X)$ , or simply $\mathrm{Aut}(X)$ , denote the group of homeomorphisms of X which commute with the G action. We show that for any pair of countable groups G and H with G infinite, there is a minimal, free, Cantor G-flow X so that H embeds into $\mathrm{Aut}(X)$ . This generalizes results of [2, 7].

We present examples of nearly integrable analytic Hamiltonian systems with several strong diffusion properties: topological weak mixing and diffusion at all times. These examples are obtained by AbC constructions with several frequencies.

We develop a thermodynamic formalism for a smooth realization of pseudo-Anosov surface homeomorphisms. In this realization, the singularities of the pseudo-Anosov map are assumed to be fixed, and the trajectories are slowed down so the differential is the identity at these points. Using Young towers, we prove existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states for geometric t-potentials. This family of equilibrium states includes a unique SRB measure and a measure of maximal entropy, the latter of which has exponential decay of correlations and the central limit theorem.

We use feral pseudoholomorphic curves and adiabatic degeneration to prove an extended version of the so-called ‘almost existence result’ for regular compact Hamiltonian energy surfaces. That is, that for a variety of symplectic manifolds equipped with a Hamiltonian, almost every (non-empty) compact energy level has a periodic orbit.