Hopf-Tsuji-Sullivan dichotomy for quotients of Hadamard spaces with a rank one isometry (Q1791645): Difference between revisions

Let $(X,d)$ be a proper Hadamard space and let $\Gamma <\mathrm{Is}(X)$ be a discrete group of isometries. Let $\mathcal{G}$ denote the set of parametrized geodesic lines in $X$ endowed with the compact-open topology and consider the action of $\mathbb{R}$ on $\mathcal{G}$ by reparametrization. This action induces a flow $g_{\Gamma}$ on the quotient space $\Gamma \backslash \mathcal{G}$. Let $\mu_{\Gamma}$ be an appropriate Radon measure on $\Gamma \backslash \mathcal{G}$ which is invariant by the flow $g_{\Gamma}$. \par The Hopf-Tsuji-Sullivan dichotomy states that (under certain conditions on the space $X$ and the group $\Gamma$) there are precisely two mutually exclusive possibilities for the dynamical system $(\Gamma\backslash \mathcal{G}, g_{\Gamma}, \mu_{\Gamma})$: either it is conservative (i.e., almost every orbit is recurrent) and ergodic (which means that the only invariant sets have zero or full measure) or it is dissipative (i.e., almost every orbit is divergent) and non-ergodic. \par In this work the author considers the case in which $\Gamma$ is a non-elementary discrete group of isometries with a rank-one isometry. In the main theorem he proves the Hopf-Tsuji-Sullivan dichotomy for the geodesic flow on the set of parametrized geodesics of $\Gamma\backslash \mathcal{G}$ with respect to Ricks' measure.