Ergodic measures of geodesic flows on compact Lie groups (Q383629)

The geodesic flow \(\Psi\) on the unit tangent bundle \(SG\) associated with a two-sided invariant metric on a compact Lie group \(G\) is considered. It is proved that for every ergodic measure \(\mu\) of \(\Psi\), there exist a flat torus \(\mathbb T\) (a maximal torus of \(G\)) and an analytic diffeomorphism \(\Gamma: SG\to SG\) that commutes with \(\Psi\), such that the image of the \(\mu\)-support is a subset of \(S\mathbb T\). As a corollary, the geodesic flow \(\Psi\) has zero topological entropy and \(\mu\) is not hyperbolic. We note that, although the vanishing of the topological entropy does not imply the integrability of the geodesic flow [\textit{L. T. Butler}, Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 355, No. 9, 3641--3650 (2003; Zbl 1054.37036)] and vice versa [\textit{A. V. Bolsinov} and \textit{I. A. Taimanov}, Invent. Math. 140, No. 3, 639--650 (2000; Zbl 0985.37027)], the result is related to the noncommutative integrability of the flow. Namely, the phase space \(SG\) is almost everywhere foliated by invariant isotropic tori (of dimension equal to the dimension of a maximal torus) with a quasi-periodic dynamics [\textit{A. V. Bolsinov} and the reviewer, in: Contemporary geometry and related topics. Proceedings of the workshop, Belgrade, Yugoslavia 2002. River Edge, NJ: World Scientific. 57--103 (2004; Zbl 1154.37356)]. Moreover, the dynamics outside the regular foliation is also quasi-periodic, in contrast to the integrable geodesic flow constructed in [\textit{A. V. Bolsinov} and \textit{I. A. Taimanov}, Invent. Math. 140, No. 3, 639--650 (2000; Zbl 0985.37027)], where the dynamics outside the regular toric foliation induces positive topological entropy.