On the ergodicity of a class of skew products (Q1086696)

The authors study skew products \[ T_{\phi}: {\mathbb{R}}/{\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{R}}\to {\mathbb{R}}/{\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{R}} \] of the form \(T_{\phi}(x,y)=(x+\alpha,y+\phi (x))\), where \(\alpha\) is an irrational number and \(\phi:[0,1]\to {\mathbb{R}}\) is continuously differentiable. It is proved that if \(\phi (1)\neq \phi (0)\) and \(\int^{1}_{0}\phi (x)dx=0,\) then \(T_{\phi}\) is ergodic with respect to the product of the normalized Haar measure on \({\mathbb{R}}/{\mathbb{Z}}\) and the Lebesgue measure on \({\mathbb{R}}\). Consequently, the factor \[ S_{\phi}: {\mathbb{R}}/{\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{R}}/{\mathbb{Z}}\to {\mathbb{R}}/{\mathbb{Z}}\times {\mathbb{R}}/{\mathbb{Z}} \] of \(T_{\phi}\) is also ergodic. For some \(\phi\) the last statement follows from a result of \textit{H. Furstenberg} [Am. J. Math. 83, 573-601 (1961; Zbl 0178.384)].