Rigidity results for quasiperiodic \(\mathrm{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\)-cocycles (Q962226)

For an irrational number \(a\) and a \(C^r\) map \(A \in C^r(\mathbb T, \text{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\), where \(\mathbb T\) denotes the 1-torus (the circle), by the cocycle \((a,A)\) is meant the map \((a,A): \mathbb T\times \text{SL}(2,\mathbb R) \to \mathbb T\times \text{SL}(2,\mathbb R)\) defined by \((x,y) \mapsto (x + a, A(x) \cdot y)\). A cocycle is reducible if there exist \(B \in C^r(\mathbb R,\mathbb P\text{SL}(2, \mathbb R))\) and \(A_* \in \text{SL}(2, \mathbb R)\) such that \(B(x+a)^{-1}A(x)B(x) = A_*\) holds for all \(x \in \mathbb R/ 2 \mathbb Z\). The authors investigate the reducibility properties of smooth cocycles over irrational rotations of the circle that go beyond the familiar Diophantine conditions on the rotations by exploiting a new technique of proof. In particular, they show that if for a given \(a\) the cocycle has bounded fibered products and if its fibered rotation number belongs to a set of full measure (depending on \(a\)), then the matrix map can be perturbed in the \(C^\infty\) topology to yield a \(C^\infty\) reducible cocycle.