Invariant measures for frequently hypercyclic operators (Q406305)

This interesting, well-written, deep article in a way presents the culmination point of the investigations on frequently hypercyclic and chaotic linear operators on a complex infinite dimensional separable Banach space from a measure theoretic point of view. The study of ergodic properties of linear dynamical systems was started by \textit{E. Flytzanis} [Geom. Funct. Anal. 5, No.~1, 1--13 (1995; Zbl 0827.46043)] and continued by \textit{F. Bayart} and \textit{S. Grivaux} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 358, No.~11, 5083--5117 (2006; Zbl 1115.47005)]. A general condition for an operator to admit a Gaussian ergodic measure with full support was obtained by \textit{F. Bayart} and \textit{É. Matheron} [``Mixing operators and small subsets of the circle'', to appear in: J. Reine Angew. Math. (2015), \url{doi:10.1515/crelle-2014-0002}, \url{arxiv:1112.1289}]. In the paper under review, the authors consider measure theoretic properties of linear operators outside of the Gaussian framework. Among many other interesting results, they prove the following theorems: (1) Every frequently hypercyclic operator \(T\) on a reflexive Banach space \(X\) admits a continuous invariant probability measure with full support, which might be required to vanish on the set of periodic points of \(T\). (2) There exists a frequently hypercyclic operator on the space \(c_0(\mathbb{Z})\) which does not admit any ergodic measure with full support. One of the main ingredients in the proof is a certain parameter \(c(T)\) associated with a hypercyclic operator \(T\) acting on a Banach space \(X\), that, roughly speaking, gives the maximal frequency with which the orbit of a hypercyclic vector for \(T\) can visit a ball centered at \(0\). This parameter is also closely connected to the existence of distributionally irregular vectors for the operator \(T\), a notion studied by \textit{N. C. Bernardes jun.} et al. [J. Funct. Anal. 265, No. 9, 2143--2163 (2013; Zbl 1302.47014)]. Answering a question of the aforementioned authors, here it is proved that (3) if an operator \(T\) admits an ergodic measure with full support, then \(T\) admits a comeager set of distributionally irregular vectors. This holds, in particular, if \(T\) has a perfectly spanning set of unimodular eigenvectors. Moreover, necessary and sufficient conditions are presented to ensure that an operator \(T\) admits an invariant measure supported on the set of its hypercyclic vectors and belongs to the closed convex hull of its periodic measures. Finally, a Baire category argument is presented to show that any operator with a perfectly spanning set of unimodular eigenvectors admits an ergodic measure with full support. It is worth mentioning in connection with the research of this paper that, very recently, \textit{Q. Menet} [``Linear chaos and frequent hypercyclicity'', Preprint, \url{arxiv:1410.7173}] has constructed a chaotic operator on \(\ell_1\) which is neither frequently hypercyclic nor distributionally chaotic; thus solving in the negative one of the most exciting open problems in linear dynamics.