We study shift spaces over a finite alphabet that can be approximated by mixing shifts of finite type in the sense of (pseudo)metrics connected to Ornstein’s $\bar {d}$ metric ($\bar {d}$-approachable shift spaces). The class of $\bar {d}$-approachable shifts can be considered as a topological analog of measure-theoretical Bernoulli systems. The notion of $\bar {d}$-approachability, together with a closely connected notion of $\bar {d}$-shadowing, was introduced by Konieczny, Kupsa, and Kwietniak [Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 43(3) (2023), 943–970]. These notions were developed with the aim of significantly generalizing specification properties. Indeed, many popular variants of the specification property, including the classic one and the almost/weak specification property, ensure $\bar {d}$-approachability and $\bar {d}$-shadowing. Here, we study further properties and connections between $\bar {d}$-shadowing and $\bar {d}$-approachability. We prove that $\bar {d}$-shadowing implies $\bar {d}$-stability (a notion recently introduced by Tim Austin). We show that for surjective shift spaces with the $\bar {d}$-shadowing property the Hausdorff pseudodistance ${\bar d}^{\mathrm {H}}$ between shift spaces induced by $\bar {d}$ is the same as the Hausdorff distance between their simplices of invariant measures with respect to the Hausdorff distance induced by Ornstein’s metric $\bar {d}$ between measures. We prove that without $\bar {d}$-shadowing this need not to be true (it is known that the former distance always bounds the latter). We provide examples illustrating these results, including minimal examples and proximal examples of shift spaces with the $\bar {d}$-shadowing property. The existence of such shift spaces was announced in the earlier paper mentioned above. It shows that $\bar {d}$-shadowing indeed generalizes the specification property.

For $\mathscr {B} \subseteq \mathbb {N} $, the $ \mathscr {B} $-free subshift $ X_{\eta } $ is the orbit closure of the characteristic function of the set of $ \mathscr {B} $-free integers. We show that many results about invariant measures and entropy, previously only known for the hereditary closure of $ X_{\eta } $, have their analogues for $ X_{\eta } $ as well. In particular, we settle in the affirmative a conjecture of Keller about a description of such measures [G. Keller. Generalized heredity in $\mathcal B$-free systems. Stoch. Dyn. 21(3) (2021), Paper No. 2140008]. A central assumption in our work is that $\eta ^{*} $ (the Toeplitz sequence that generates the unique minimal component of $ X_{\eta } $) is regular. From this, we obtain natural periodic approximations that we frequently use in our proofs to bound the elements in $ X_{\eta } $ from above and below.

In this paper we study persistence features of topological entropy and periodic orbit growth of Hamiltonian diffeomorphisms on surfaces with respect to Hofer's metric. We exhibit stability of these dynamical quantities in a rather strong sense for a specific family of maps studied by Polterovich and Shelukhin. A crucial ingredient comes from enhancement of lower bounds for the topological entropy and orbit growth forced by a periodic point, formulated in terms of the geometric self-intersection number and a variant of Turaev's cobracket of the free homotopy class that it induces. Those bounds are obtained within the framework of Le Calvez and Tal's forcing theory.

In this paper, we prove using elementary techniques that any group of diffeomorphisms acting on the 2-sphere and properly extending the conformal group of Möbius transformations must be at least 4-transitive or, more precisely, arc 4-transitive. As an important consequence, we derive that any such group must always contain an element of positive topological entropy. We also provide a self-contained characterization, in terms of transitivity, of the Möbius transformations within the full group of sphere diffeomorphisms.

In this paper, we address the problem of computing the topological entropy of a map $\psi : G \to G$, where G is a Lie group, given by some power $\psi (g) = g^k$, with k a positive integer. When G is abelian, $\psi $ is an endomorphism and its topological entropy is given by $h(\psi ) = \dim (T(G)) \log (k)$, where $T(G)$ is the maximal torus of G, as shown by Patrão [The topological entropy of endomorphisms of Lie groups. Israel J. Math. 234 (2019), 55–80]. However, when G is not abelian, $\psi $ is no longer an endomorphism and these previous results cannot be used. Still, $\psi $ has some interesting symmetries, for example, it commutes with the conjugations of G. In this paper, the structure theory of Lie groups is used to show that $h(\psi ) = \dim (T)\log (k)$, where T is a maximal torus of G, generalizing the formula in the abelian case. In particular, the topological entropy of powers on compact Lie groups with discrete center is always positive, in contrast to what happens to endomorphisms of such groups, which always have null entropy.

We prove an explicit characterization of the points in Thurston’s Master Teapot, which can be implemented algorithmically to test whether a point in $\mathbb {C}\times \mathbb {R}$ belongs to the complement of the Master Teapot. As an application, we show that the intersection of the Master Teapot with the unit cylinder is not symmetrical under reflection through the plane that is the product of the imaginary axis of $\mathbb {C}$ and $\mathbb {R}$.

In this paper, we show that each element in the convex hull of the rotation set of a compact invariant chain transitive set is realized by a Birkhoff solution, which is an improvement of the fundamental lemma of T. Zhou and W.-X. Qin [Pseudo solutions, rotation sets, and shadowing rotations for monotone recurrence relations. Math. Z. 297 (2021), 1673–1692] in the study of rotation sets for monotone recurrence relations. We then investigate the properties of rotation sets assuming the system has zero topological entropy. The rotation set for a Birkhoff recurrence class is a singleton and the forward and backward rotation numbers are identical for each solution in the same Birkhoff recurrence class. We also show the continuity of rotation numbers on the set of non-wandering points. If the rotation set is upper-stable, then we show that each boundary point is a rational number, and we also obtain a result of bounded deviation.

We study approximation schemes for shift spaces over a finite alphabet using (pseudo)metrics connected to Ornstein’s ${\bar d}$ metric. This leads to a class of shift spaces we call ${\bar d}$ -approachable. A shift space is ${\bar d}$ -approachable when its canonical sequence of Markov approximations converges to it also in the ${\bar d}$ sense. We give a topological characterization of chain-mixing ${\bar d}$ -approachable shift spaces. As an application we provide a new criterion for entropy density of ergodic measures. Entropy density of a shift space means that every invariant measure $\mu $ of such a shift space is the weak $^*$ limit of a sequence $\mu _n$ of ergodic measures with the corresponding sequence of entropies $h(\mu _n)$ converging to $h(\mu )$ . We prove ergodic measures are entropy-dense for every shift space that can be approximated in the ${\bar d}$ pseudometric by a sequence of transitive sofic shifts. This criterion can be applied to many examples that were beyond the reach of previously known techniques including hereditary $\mathscr {B}$ -free shifts and some minimal or proximal systems. The class of symbolic dynamical systems covered by our results includes also shift spaces where entropy density was established previously using the (almost) specification property.

We are interested in dendrites for which all invariant measures of zero-entropy mappings have discrete spectrum, and we prove that this holds when the closure of the endpoint set of the dendrites is countable. This solves an open question which has been around for awhile, and almost completes the characterization of dendrites with this property.

We construct the complete set of orders of growth and define on it the generalized entropy of a dynamical system. With this object, we provide a framework wherein we can study the separation of orbits of a map beyond the scope of exponential growth. We show that this construction is particularly useful for studying families of dynamical systems with vanishing entropy. Moreover, we see that the space of orders of growth in which orbits are separated is wilder than expected. We achieve this with different types of examples.

We develop a forcing theory of topological entropy for Reeb flows in dimension three. A transverse link L in a closed contact $3$ -manifold $(Y,\xi )$ is said to force topological entropy if $(Y,\xi )$ admits a Reeb flow with vanishing topological entropy, and every Reeb flow on $(Y,\xi )$ realizing L as a set of periodic Reeb orbits has positive topological entropy. Our main results establish topological conditions on a transverse link L, which imply that L forces topological entropy. These conditions are formulated in terms of two Floer theoretical invariants: the cylindrical contact homology on the complement of transverse links introduced by Momin [A. Momin. J. Mod. Dyn.5 (2011), 409–472], and the strip Legendrian contact homology on the complement of transverse links, introduced by Alves [M. R. R. Alves. PhD Thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2014] and further developed here. We then use these results to show that on every closed contact $3$ -manifold that admits a Reeb flow with vanishing topological entropy, there exist transverse knots that force topological entropy.

We study the rotation sets for homeomorphisms homotopic to the identity on the torus $\mathbb T^d$ , $d\ge 2$ . In the conservative setting, we prove that there exists a Baire residual subset of the set $\text {Homeo}_{0, \lambda }(\mathbb T^2)$ of conservative homeomorphisms homotopic to the identity so that the set of points with wild pointwise rotation set is a Baire residual subset in $\mathbb T^2$ , and that it carries full topological pressure and full metric mean dimension. Moreover, we prove that for every $d\ge 2$ the rotation set of $C^0$ -generic conservative homeomorphisms on $\mathbb T^d$ is convex. Related results are obtained in the case of dissipative homeomorphisms on tori. The previous results rely on the description of the topological complexity of the set of points with wild historic behavior and on the denseness of periodic measures for continuous maps with the gluing orbit property.

We describe topological obstructions (involving periodic points, topological entropy and rotation sets) for a homeomorphism on a compact manifold to embed in a continuous flow. We prove that homeomorphisms in a $C^{0}$-open and dense set of homeomorphisms isotopic to the identity in compact manifolds of dimension at least two are not the time-1 map of a continuous flow. Such property is also true for volume-preserving homeomorphisms in compact manifolds of dimension at least five. In the case of conservative homeomorphisms of the torus $\mathbb {T}^{d} (d\ge 2)$ isotopic to identity, we describe necessary conditions for a homeomorphism to be flowable in terms of the rotation sets.

Let X be a normal projective variety of dimension n and G an abelian group of automorphisms such that all elements of $G\setminus \{\operatorname {id}\}$ are of positive entropy. Dinh and Sibony showed that G is actually free abelian of rank $\le n - 1$ . The maximal rank case has been well understood by De-Qi Zhang. We aim to characterize the pair $(X, G)$ such that $\operatorname {rank} G = n - 2$ .

In this paper we establish some constraints on the eigenvalues for the action of a self map of a proper variety on its $\ell$-adic cohomology. The essential ingredients are a trace formula due to Fujiwara, and the theory of weights.

We study the problem of existence of $\mathcal{F}$-structures (in the sense of Cheeger and Gromov, but not necessarily polarized) on compact complex surfaces. We give a complete classification of compact complex surfaces of Káhler type admitting $\mathcal{F}$-structures. In the non-Káhler case we give a complete classification modulo the gap in the classification of surfaces of class VII.

We then use these results to study the minimal entropy problem for compact complex surfaces: we prove that, modulo the gap in the classification of surfaces of class VII, all compact complex surfaces of Kodaira dimension less than or equal to 1 have minimal entropy zero and such a surface admits a smooth metric $g$ with zero topological entropy if and only if it is ${\mathbb C} P^2$, a ruled surface of genus 0 or 1, a Hopf surface, a complex torus, a Kodaira surface, a hyperelliptic surface or a Kodaira surface modulo a finite group. The key result we use to prove this is a new topological obstruction to the existence of metrics with vanishing topological entropy.

Finally we show that these results fit perfectly into Wall's study of geometric structures on compact complex surfaces. For instance, we show that the minimal entropy problem can be solved for a minimal compact Káhler surface $S$ of Kodaira dimension $- \infty$, 0 or 1 if and only if $S$ admits a geometric structure modelled on ${\mathbb C} P^2$, $S^2 \times S^2$, $S^2 \times {\mathbb E}^2$ or ${\mathbb E}^4$.

The notion of expansive homeomorphism is important in topological dynamics and continuum theory. In this paper, a new kind of homeomorphism will be introduced and studied, namely the continuum-wise expansive homeomorphism. The class of continuum-wise expansive homeomorphisms is much larger than the one of expansive homeomorphisms. In fact, the class of continuum-wise expansive homeomorphisms contains many important homeomorphisms which often appear in "chaotic" topological dynamics and continuum theory, but which are not expansive homeomorphisms. For example, the shift maps of Knaster's indecomposable chainable continua are continuum-wise expansive homeomorphisms, but they are not expansive homeomorphisms. Also, there is a continuum-wise expansive homeomorphism on the pseudoarc. We study several properties of continuum-wise expansive homeomorphisms. Many theorems concerning expansive homeomorphisms will be generalized to the case of continuum-wise expansive homeomorphisms.