Ergodic properties of equilibrium measures for smooth three dimensional flows (Q268281)

The authors consider the problem of understanding when a smooth flow is a Bernoulli automorphism. This problem was extensively studied by \textit{D. Ornstein} and \textit{B. Weiss} [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 18, No. 2, 441--456 (1998; Zbl 0915.58076)] and \textit{A. Katok} and \textit{K. Burns} [ibid. 14, No. 4, 757--785 (1994; Zbl 0816.58029)] among others. The purpose of this article is to study the ergodic structure of measures of maximal entropy for flows in three dimensional manifolds and with positive entropy. One the main results (Theorem 1.1) states that if \(\mathbf T=\{T_t:M\to M\}\) is a flow on a compact three dimensional \(C^\infty\) manifold \(M\), which is generated by a \(C^{1+\varepsilon}\) vector field \(X\) on \(M\), then any equilibrium measure \(\mu\) for a Hölder continuous potential has at most countable many ergodic components \(\mu_n\) with positive entropy and such that \(\mathbf T\) is Bernoulli up to a period with respect to each measure. This means that the flow is Bernoulli or isomorphic to a product of a Bernoulli flow and a rotational flow.