Keplerian shear in ergodic theory (Q2202470)

A prominent example of Keplerian shear in celestial mechanics occurs with the planet Saturn and its rings. The effect of gravity on the extended mass of rings produces a shearing force. As a consequence, any large scale heterogeneity within the system of rings is essentially wrapped around the rings until -- over a length of time -- an angular equidistribution develops. This effect is used to explain the radial symmetry of large planetary rings like those of Saturn. Keplerian shear is also seen as a more general feature of many integrable Hamiltonian systems. The phase space in action-angle coordinates is foliated by invariant Lagrangian tori. The dynamics of a point in phase space is then conjugate to translation on one of these tori. In this paper the author explores Keplerian shear in the context of ergodic theory. The Keplerian shear for a dynamical system is defined more formally as follows: on a space \(\Omega\) with measure \(\mu\) a flow \(g_t\) that preserves the probability measure exhibits Keplerian shear if, for all \(f \in \mathbb L^2 (\Omega, \mu)\), \(\lim _{t \to \infty} f \circ g_t = \mathbb E_\mu (f | \mathcal I),\) where \(\mathcal I\) is the invariant \(\sigma\)-algebra and the convergence is for the weak topology on \(\mathbb L^2 (\Omega, \mu)\). The author views Keplerian shear as a conditional version of strong mixing. The author provides some general results that describe Keplerian shear, and then considers a family of systems that may exhibit that shear. The family consists of fibrations by tori where the flow acts by translation on each torus. Such a family includes integrable Hamiltonian systems described in action-angle coordinates. The author provides an explicit criterion that ensures Keplerian shear and shows that it is \(C^r\)-generic for \(r \ge 1\). Several examples of systems with and without Keplerian shear are provided.