The dynamical Borel-Cantelli Lemma and the waiting time problems (Q2469118)

Let \((X,T,\mu)\) be a dynamical system (\(T\) preserves the probability measure \(\mu\)). A decreasing sequence of sets \(A_n\) is said to be a Borel-Cantelli sequence (BC) if \(\sum \mu (A_n) = \infty\) and \(\mu (\limsup T^{-n}A_n)=1\). It is known that in many (more or less) hyperbolic or ``fast'' mixing systems, various sequences of geometrically nice sets have the BC property. Let \(B(y,r_n)\) be a sequence of balls with center \(y\) and radius \(r_n\). A point \(x\) satisfies the waiting time problem (with respect to the sequence \(B(y,r_n)\)) if \[ \lim_{n\to \infty} \frac{\log \tau _{B(y,r_n)}(x)}{-\log \mu (B(y,r_n))} =1 \] where \(\tau _{A} (x) = \min \{n\in \mathbb N:\;T^n(x)\in A\}\). For various chaotic systems it is known that almost all points have this property. In the paper under review it is shown that the BC property and the waiting time problem are connected. The authors show that in systems where decreasing sequences of balls have the BC property, the waiting time problem is satisfied for almost all points. The converse is true provided the radii of the balls decrease in a ``controlled'' way. This allows to obtain Borel-Cantelli like results on certain decreasing sequences of balls in systems like Axiom A and generic interval exchanges.