We show that robustly transitive endomorphisms of a closed manifold must have a non-trivial dominated splitting or be a local diffeomorphism. This allows to get some topological obstructions for the existence of robustly transitive endomorphisms. To obtain the result, we must understand the structure of the kernel of the differential and the recurrence to the critical set of the endomorphism after perturbation.

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.

Consider an analytic Hamiltonian system near its analytic invariant torus $\mathcal T_0$ carrying zero frequency. We assume that the Birkhoff normal form of the Hamiltonian at $\mathcal T_0$ is convergent and has a particular form: it is an analytic function of its non-degenerate quadratic part. We prove that in this case there is an analytic canonical transformation—not just a formal power series—bringing the Hamiltonian into its Birkhoff normal form.

We prove a normal form for strong magnetic fields on a closed, oriented surface and use it to derive two dynamical results for the associated flow. First, we show the existence of invariant tori and trapping regions provided a natural non-resonance condition holds. Second, we prove that the flow cannot be Zoll unless (i) the Riemannian metric has constant curvature and the magnetic function is constant, or (ii) the magnetic function vanishes and the metric is Zoll. We complement the second result by exhibiting an exotic magnetic field on a flat two-torus yielding a Zoll flow for arbitrarily weak rescalings.

We investigate, both analytically and numerically, dispersive fractalisation and quantisation of solutions to periodic linear and nonlinear Fermi–Pasta–Ulam–Tsingou systems. When subject to periodic boundary conditions and discontinuous initial conditions, e.g., a step function, both the linearised and nonlinear continuum models for FPUT exhibit fractal solution profiles at irrational times (as determined by the coefficients and the length of the interval) and quantised profiles (piecewise constant or perturbations thereof) at rational times. We observe a similar effect in the linearised FPUT chain at times t where these models have validity, namely t = O(h−2), where h is proportional to the intermass spacing or, equivalently, the reciprocal of the number of masses. For nonlinear periodic FPUT systems, our numerical results suggest a somewhat similar behaviour in the presence of small nonlinearities, which disappears as the nonlinear force increases in magnitude. However, these phenomena are manifested on very long time intervals, posing a severe challenge for numerical integration as the number of masses increases. Even with the high-order splitting methods used here, our numerical investigations are limited to nonlinear FPUT chains with a smaller number of masses than would be needed to resolve this question unambiguously.

We prove that a Hamiltonian $p\in {{C}^{\infty }}({{T}^{*}}{{\mathbf{R}}^{n}})$ is locally integrable near a non-degenerate critical point ${{\rho }_{0}}$ of the energy, provided that the fundamental matrix at ${{\rho }_{0}}$ has rationally independent eigenvalues, none purely imaginary. This is done by using Birkhoff normal forms, which turn out to be convergent in the ${{C}^{\infty }}$ sense. We also give versions of the Lewis-Sternberg normal form near a hyperbolic fixed point of a canonical transformation. Then we investigate the complex case, showing that when $p$ is holomorphic near ${{\rho }_{0}}\in {{T}^{*}}{{\mathbf{C}}^{n}},$ then Re $p$ becomes integrable in the complex domain for real times, while the Birkhoff series and the Birkhoff transforms may not converge, i.e.,$p$ may not be integrable. These normal forms also hold in the semi-classical frame.