On the mixing and Bernoulli properties for geodesic flows on rank 1 manifolds without focal points (Q2042904)

Let \(M\) be a closed manifold, \(g\) a Riemannian metric on \(M\) and \(SM\subset TM\) the unit sphere bundle of \(M\). Given a point \(p\in M\) and a unit tangent vector \(v\in S_pM\), the rank of \(v\), denoted by \(\mathrm{rank}(v)\), is defined as the dimension of the space of parallel Jacobi fields along the geodesic \(\gamma_{v}\). The rank of the manifold \(M\) is defined as \(\mathrm{rank}(M)=\min\{\mathrm{rank}(v): v\in SM\}\). Note that \(\mathrm{rank}(v) \ge 1\) for every \(v\in SM\) and hence \(\mathrm{rank}(M)\ge 1\). For example, if \(\mathrm{rank}(M)= 1\), then \(\mathrm{rank}(v)=1\) for some \(v\in SM\), which means that there is no non-parallel Jacobi field along the geodesic \(\gamma_v\). Two points \(p_1=\gamma_v(t_1)\) and \(p_2=\gamma_v(t_2)\) are said to be focal along the geodesic \(\gamma_v\) if there is a Jacobi field \(J\) along \(\gamma_v\) with \(J(t_1)=0\), \(J'(t_1) \neq 0\) and \(\frac{d}{dt}|_{t=t_2}\|J(t)\|^2= 0\). It has been proved in [\textit{F. Liu} et al., Discrete Contin. Dyn. Syst. 40, No. 3, 1517--1554 (2020; Zbl 1501.37032)] that if \(M\) is a closed rank-1 manifold without focal points, then there is a unique measure of maximal entropy for the geodesic flow \(\phi^t\) on \(SM\). Denote this measure by \(\mu_{\text{max}}\). In this paper the authors show that the measure \(\mu_{\text{max}}\) is in fact mixing. Moreover, in the special case that \(M\) is a closed surface with genus \(\ge 2\), the measure \(\mu_{\text{max}}\) is actually Bernoulli.