Triple collisions of invariant bundles (Q379047)

The authors study the reducibility properties of linear cocycles \(A:X\to\text{GL}(n,\mathbb{R})\) over minimal base systems \(f:X\to X\). The Oseledets Multiplicative Ergodic Theorem provides the finest splitting of the bundle systems: \(\mathbb{R}^n=E^1_x\oplus\cdots\oplus E^{k(x)}_x\) over \(x\in X\). Generally speaking, such a splitting is only measurable. In fact, it may happen that there is no nontrivial continuous splitting at all even when all \(E^i_x\) are 1-dimensional; the later is referred as a completely loss of reducibility. More precisely, a cocycle \((A,f)\) is said to be non-uniform completely reducible, if \(k(x)=n\) for almost all \(x\in X\), while the bundle \(\mathbb{R}^n\times X\) cannot be decomposed as the Whitney sum of continuous invariant subbundles. \textit{M. R. Herman} constructed such an example for \(n=2\), where the base is an irrational rotation [Comment. Math. Helv. 58, 453--502 (1983; Zbl 0554.58034)], see also [\textit{P. G. Harper}, Proc. Phys. Soc., Sect. A 68, 874--878 (1955; Zbl 0065.23708)]. A nontrivial 3D example was constructed by \textit{R. A. Johnson}, as the uniform limit of periodic matrices [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 99, 261--267 (1987; Zbl 0626.34045)]. In this paper, the authors construct explicitly several non-uniform completely reducible examples among 3D quasi-periodic linear skew-product systems. The first class is obtained by a specified lift from \(\text{GL}(2,\mathbb{R})\) to \(L^2_s((\mathbb{R})^\ast,\mathbb{R})\); while the second class is obtained by a (generic) normal shift of the trivial lift. This paper also provides some numerical illustrations about the way the Oseledets splitting varies along the base points.