Unique ergodicity, stable ergodicity, and the Mautner phenomenon for diffeomorphisms (Q819500)

\textit{M. Grayson, C. Pugh} and \textit{M. Shub} [Ann. Math 140, 295--329 (1994; Zbl 0824.58032)] studied the stable ergodicity of volume preserving partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms on a compact manifold \(M\), based on an important issue, namely that strong stable and unstable manifolds foliate \(M\), where essential accessibility is assumed (not easy to check). Essential accessibility is equivalent to affine stable ergodicity by Starkov. Full accessibility is a stronger assumption than essential accessibility, and is stable under perturbation and easy to verify. The paper under review is to generalize the Mautner phenomenon by using Hopf-Anosov argument for the ergodicity of Anosov systems and to show that the stable ergodicity is equivalent to the unique ergodicity of the strong stable manifold foliations. Mautner first observed that invariance of a function along the geodesic flow implies invariance along the horocycle flows. Let \(G\) be a connected Lie group and \(B \subset G\) be a closed subgroup such that \(G/B\) is compact and of finite volume. Let \(f: G/B \to G/B\) be an affine map with covering \(\tilde{f}: G \to G\) such that \(d \tilde{f}\) splits into generalized eigenspaces \({\mathfrak g} = {\mathfrak g}^u\oplus {\mathfrak g}^c\oplus {\mathfrak g}^s\) of \(G^u, G^c, G^s\). Let \(H \subset G\) be a subgroup generated by \(G^u\) and \(G^s\). The generalization of Mautner's phenomenon is Theorem 2.1, which states that every \(f\)-invariance \(L^1\) function \(\phi : G/B \to R\) is essentially constant on cosets \(x \overline{HB}\). The proof is based on the Hopf-Anosov argument: \(\phi\) is essentially constant along the leaves of strong stable and unstable foliations, so along \(H\)-orbits. Since \(H\) is normal, its orbits foliate \(M = G/B\). The proof of Theorem 2.1 is given in the section 2. In the last section 3, the authors prove Theorem 3.1 for affine diffeomorphisms \(f\) with standing hypothesis which states that (1) \(f\) is a \(K\)-automorphism of \(M\), (2) \(G^s\) is ergodic on \(M\), (3) \(G^s\) is minimal on \(M\) and (4) \(G^s\) is strongly ergodic on \(M\), are all equivalent. The proof uses Dani's characterization of \(K\)-automorphism and Witt's result.