New criteria for ergodicity and nonuniform hyperbolicity

DOI10.1215/00127094-1444314MaRDI QIDQ654876zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors M. A. Rodriguez Hertz, F. Rodriguez Hertz, Ali Tahzibi, R. Ures

Publication date 23 December 2011

Published in Duke Mathematical Journal (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/0907.4539

Lyapunov exponent non-uniform hyperbolicity partial hyperbolicity stable ergodicity

Smooth ergodic theory, invariant measures for smooth dynamical systems (37C40) Nonuniformly hyperbolic systems (Lyapunov exponents, Pesin theory, etc.) (37D25) Partially hyperbolic systems and dominated splittings (37D30) Thermodynamic formalism, variational principles, equilibrium states for dynamical systems (37D35)

Abstract: In this work we obtain a new criterion to establish ergodicity and non-uniform hyperbolicity of smooth measures of diffeomorphisms. This method allows us to give a more accurate description of certain ergodic components. The use of this criterion in combination with topological devices such as blenders lets us obtain global ergodicity and abundance of non-zero Lyapunov exponents in some contexts. In the partial hyperbolicity context, we obtain that stably ergodic diffeomorphisms are C^1-dense among volume preserving partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms with two-dimensional center bundle. This is motivated by a well known conjecture of C. Pugh and M. Shub.

Review text

In the mid-nineties of the past century, Pugh and Shub conjectured that stable ergodicity is dense among partial hyperbolic dynamical systems. This paper is a remarkable contribution to this conjecture for the discrete-time case. We recall that for \(\alpha>0\), a \(C^{1+\alpha}\) volume-preserving diffeomorphism is said to be stably ergodic if the exists a \(C^1\)-neighborhood on which every \(C^{1+\alpha}\) volume-preserving diffeomorphism is ergodic. Apart of the long-time known Anosov diffeomorphisms, the first examples of stably ergodic diffeomorphisms outside the hyperbolic world were given in [\textit{M. Grayson} et al., Ann. Math. (2) 140, No. 2, 295--329 (1994; Zbl 0824.58032)] and were defined as the time-one of a geodesic flow on a negative curvature surface. In this example the neutral flow direction generates a non-hyperbolic one-dimensional manifold (central manifold). The contributions towards the previous conjecture always assumed a ``one-dimensionality hypothesis on the central bundle. Indeed, we have the result [\textit{F. Rodriguez Hertz} et al., Invent. Math. 172, No. 2, 353--381 (2008; Zbl 1136.37020)] and also [\textit{K. Burns} and \textit{A. Wilkinson}, Ann. Math. (2) 171, No. 1, 451--489 (2010; Zbl 1196.37057)] where it is considered that the central bundle displays the ``bunching condition (in rough terms, the central dynamics is conformal, in particular, trivially satisfied if the central bundle is one-dimensional). In the present paper it is proved that (Theorem B), within the volume-preserving discrete-time setting, stable ergodicity is \(C^1\)-dense among partial hyperbolic dynamical systems with a two-dimensional central bundle. In order to obtain this result, the authors establish a new criterion for ergodicity and for the absence of zero Lyapunov exponents (Theorem A). This criterion assures, in brief terms, ergodicity and non-uniform hyperbolicity under the hypothesis of positive measure of stable/unstable-saturated subsets associated to ergodic homoclinic classes. It is interesting to observe that another concept used along the arguments to obtain stable ergodicity is the concept of ``blenders that was originally introduced to obtain robust transitivity.

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