Geometric and measure-theoretical structures of maps with mostly contracting center (Q2634685)

This paper deals with the notion of \textit{mostly contracting centers}, which are a reference to partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms and translate roughly in all the Lyapunov exponents along the invariant center bundle being negative. Such concept was firstly introduced in 2000 in the work of \textit{C. Bonatti} and \textit{M. Viana} [Isr. J. Math. 115, 157--193 (2000; Zbl 0996.37033)], and was used to ensure the existence and finiteness of physical measures. From this moment on, many authors dedicated themselves to the theme, and found interesting properties of such maps that justify their separate study, among all the classes of dynamical systems. In this work, they prove that for such systems, that is, for \(C^{1+\varepsilon}\) diffeomorphisms \(f\), having a mostly contracting center implies the existence of a skeleton, which is a finite collection of hyperbolic saddle points with transversality and non-intersection conditions, and a distinct physical measure for each element of the skeleton with properties regarding their support and basin of attraction. Moreover, they prove that the number of physical measures is precisely the number of elements in the skeleton. With this result they are able to obtain a result of perturbation of skeletons, which proves, among several other things, that the number of physical measures behave upper semicontinuously with the dynamics. Also, they prove that if there is a neighborhood of \(f\) in which all the diffeomorphisms have the same number of physical measures, the the basins of the diffeomorphisms behave continuously in the neighborhood.