Variational principles for topological entropies of subsets (Q1760157)

In the study of dynamical systems, topological entropy and measure-theoretical entropy are important invariants. Traditionally, the topological entropy is defined for the whole space or an invariant compact set and the measure-theoretical entropy is defined for any invariant measure. It is well known that these two entropies are related by a variational principle. An interesting question is whether there is a certain variational relation between topological entropy and measure-theoretic entropy for arbitrary non-invariant compact sets or for Borel sets in general. In the paper under review, the authors define the measure-theoretical lower and upper entropies \(\underline{h}_{\mu}(T)\) and \(\bar{h}_{\mu}(T)\) for any Borel probability measure \(\mu\). For any non-empty compact subset \(K\subset X\), they obtain two versions of variational principles. More precisely, \[ h_{\text{top}}^B(T,K)=\sup\{\underline{h}_{\mu}(T):\mu(K)=1\}, \] and \[ h_{\text{top}}^P(T,K)=\sup\{\bar{h}_{\mu}(T):\mu(K)=1\}, \] where \(h_{\text{top}}^B(T,K)\) is the Bowen topological entropy of \(K\) and \(h_{\text{top}}^P(T,K)\) is the packing topological entropy of \(K\).