Partially volume expanding diffeomorphisms (Q2223552)

The authors introduce a notion of partial volume expansion for certain partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms with splitting \(TM=E^{cs} \oplus E^u\). The partial volume expansion assumption means that \(\log |\det (D_x f|_H)| \) is positive for any \(x \in M\) and any hyperplane \(H\) containing the unstable subspace \(E^u\). This condition is shown to be enough to guarantee the existence and finiteness of physical measures whose basins cover almost every point in \(M\). This is Theorem A in the paper. In Theorem B the authors study the link between their notion of volume expansion and the notion of being mostly contracting (see [\textit{C. Bonatti} and \textit{M. Viana}, Isr. J. Math. 115, 157--193 (2000; Zbl 0996.37033)]). They provide a criterium to study partially hyperbolic sets with splitting \(TM = E^{cs} \oplus E^u\), where \(E^{cs}\) is two-dimensional. They provide some examples to show how their results apply.