On mixing and sparse ergodic theorems (Q2026750)

Let \(G =\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{R}),\) \(\Gamma \leq G\) be a lattice and \(X\) be the homogeneous space \(X=G/\Gamma\). Let \[U=\Big\{u_t=\begin{pmatrix} 1 & t \\ 0 & 1 \end{pmatrix}, t \in \mathbb{R}\Big\}\] be the upper unipotent group. Given \(f \in \mathcal{C}_c (X)\) (space of continuous functions with compact support), is it true that the horocyclic averages along the squares, \(A_Nf(x) =\frac{1}{N}\sum_{n=1}^{N}f(u_{n^2}.x)\), converge everywhere? By standard arguments, \((A_N(f))\) converges almost everywhere. The author gives an estimate of the Hausdorff dimension of the exceptional set. He proves that if \(f\) is a bounded Lipschitz function with zero mean (i.e., \(\int_X f d\mu=0)\) for which \((X ,u_t)\) is mixing with polynomial rate \(\alpha\) for some \(\alpha>0\), then for any sequence \(\{a_n \}_{n \in \mathbb{N}} \subset \mathbb{N}\) which grows polynomially with rate \(d\), the following holds: \[\textrm{dim}_H\Big\{x \in X / \limsup \Big|\frac{1}{N}\sum_{n=1}^{N}f(u_{a_n}.x)\Big|>0 \Big\} \leq 3-\frac{\alpha'}{d},\] for some \(\alpha'\) which depend on \(d,\alpha\) and \(\Gamma.\) As a consequence, he obtains that for a fixed non-constant polynomial \(p \in \mathbb{Z}[x]\) with \(\textrm{deg}(p) = d\). There exists a number \(s > 0\) which depends on \(\Gamma\) and \(p\) such that for every bounded Lipschitz function \(f\) the following estimate holds: \[\textrm{dim}_H\Big\{x \in X / \limsup \Big|\frac{1}{N}\sum_{n=1}^{N}f(u_{p(n)}.x)-\int_X f d\mu\Big|>0 \Big\} \leq 3-\frac{s}{d},\] where the number \(s\) is related to the spectral gap of \(G/\Gamma.\) A similar estimate is given if \(G\) is a Lie simple group and \(\Gamma \leq G\) is a lattice.