Parabolic perturbations of unipotent flows on compact quotients of \(\mathrm{SL}(3,\mathbb{R})\) (Q2326898)

Given a measure-preserving flow \(\phi_t: (X, \mu) \rightarrow (X, \mu)\) of a probability space \((X, \mu)\), a central question in dynamical systems is what properties of \(\phi_t\) are \textit{stable} under various types of perturbations. In this paper \textit{smooth} perturbations of unipotent flows on higher-rank homogeneous spaces are considered. The spaces considered are compact quotients \(\mathcal M = \Gamma \backslash \mathrm{SL}(3, \mathbb R)\), the flow \(h_t = \exp(tU)\) is the action of a unipotent one-parameter subgroup by right multiplication, the preserved measure is the Haar measure. The perturbations \(\tilde{h}_t\) are given by adding non-constant components in the Lie algebra that commutes with \(U\), that is, the flow is induced by \(\tilde{U} = U + \beta Z\), where \([U, Z] =0\), and \(\beta: \mathcal M \rightarrow \mathbb R \) is a (small) non-constant function. The main result of the paper is that if \(\tilde{h}_t\) preserves a measure equivalent to the Haar measure, then it is parabolic and mixing. A key ingredient of the proof is a very nice non-homogeneous version of the well-known Mautner phenomenon for homogeneous flows.