Banach spaces for piecewise cone-hyperbolic maps (Q975583)

Let \(T:X\rightarrow X\) be a discrete or continuous time dynamical system. A transfer operator, or generalized Perron-Frobenius operator, for this dynamical system is an operator of the form \[ {\mathcal L}_\psi:f\mapsto{\mathcal L}_\psi f(x)= \sum_{y\in T^{-1}(x)}\psi(y)f(y) \] which acts on some function (or distribution) space \(B\). Here \(\psi\) is some function, for example \(\psi(y)=T'(y)^\beta\) with \(\beta\in\mathbb C\), and \(B\) is chosen so that the operator \({\mathcal L}_\beta\) has ``nice'' spectral properties. Using those spectral properties one can obtain important properties of the dynamical system, e.g., analytic continuation of the dynamical zeta function, spectral gaps, exponential decay of correlations, existence of invariant measures etc. One of the most difficult and important problems in the theory of transfer operators is to define the appropriate function (distribution) space \(B\). Depending on the applications one has in mind, the types of spaces which are usually considered are either Banach, Hölder, Hardy or Sobolev spaces. In the paper under review the authors consider systems which are piecewise smooth piecewise hyperbolic satisfying a bunching condition, i.e., a bound on a quotient of contraction and expansion coefficients (instead of a smoothness condition on the stable foliation, as was required in [the authors, Ann. Inst. Henri Poincaré, Anal. Non Linéaire 26, No.~4, 1453--1481 (2009; Zbl 1183.37045)]). The dynamics is additionally required to be \(C^{1+\alpha}\) \((\alpha>0)\) on each (closed) domain of smoothness, which means that the results do not apply directly to discrete-time Sinai billiards. The bunching condition is always satisfied in dimension two, so the results apply also to the situations studied by \textit{M. F. Demers} and \textit{C. Liverani} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 360, No. 9, 4777--4814 (2008; Zbl 1153.37019)] and \textit{L.-S. Young} [Ann. Math. (2) 147, No. 3, 585--650 (1998; Zbl 0945.37009)]. The main result of the paper is an upper bound on the essential spectral radius for a transfer operator \({\mathcal L}_\psi\) of a system satisfying the above mentioned conditions, and acting on a Banach space \(\mathbf H\) of anisotropic distributions. In general, the bound is not easy to express explicitly, but in the case of \(\psi=|\det DT|^{-1}\), the essential spectral radius is bounded by 1 for a particular bunching condition. The precise definition of the space \(\mathbf H\) is rather complicated but an ``intuitive'' description is that it consists of distributions with \(t\) derivatives in \(L^{p}\) in any direction and \(s\) derivatives in the stable direction, for some suitable parameters \(s,t\) and \(p\). The construction of \(\mathbf{H}\) builds on the Triebel spaces \(H_{p}^{t,s}\) which were used by the same two authors in [loc. cit.]. When the complexity is sub-exponential, the result implies a spectral gap for the transfer operator corresponding to the physical measures in many cases (for example if \(T\) preserves volume, or if the stable dimension is equal to 1 and the unstable dimension is not zero). In Appendix C, a variant of the main theorem is proven in the case of an operator essentially corresponding to a transfer operator of a multi-valued map. As an application of the main theorem (or its variant from Appendix C), the authors also prove (in Appendix D) that under certain conditions, there exists a ``physical description'' of the dynamical system, i.e., a set of invariant, ergodic and disjoint sets \(A_i\) (with positive Lebesgue measure) and measures \(\mu_i\), with \(\mu_i(A_i)=1\), and such that \(\frac{1}{n}\sum_{j=0}^{n-1}f (T^jx)\rightarrow\int f\,d\mu_i\) for all \(x\in A_i\).