We prove that a partially hyperbolic attracting set for a $C^2$ vector field, having slow recurrence to equilibria, supports an ergodic physical/SRB measure if, and only if, the trapping region admits non-uniform sectional expansion on a positive Lebesgue measure subset. Moreover, in this case, the attracting set supports at most finitely many ergodic physical/SRB measures, which are also Gibbs states along the central-unstable direction. This extends to continuous time systems a similar well-known result obtained for diffeomorphisms, encompassing the presence of equilibria accumulated by regular orbits within the attracting set. In codimension two the same result holds, assuming only the trajectories on the trapping region admit a sequence of times with asymptotical sectional expansion, on a positive volume subset. We present several examples of application, including the existence of physical measures for asymptotically sectional hyperbolic attracting sets, and obtain physical measures in an alternative unified way for many known examples: Lorenz-like and Rovella attractors, and sectional-hyperbolic attracting sets (including the multidimensional Lorenz attractor).

In this article, we revisit the notion of some hyperbolicity introduced by Pujals and Sambarino [A sufficient condition for robustly minimal foliations. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 26(1) (2006), 281–289]. We present a more general definition that, in particular, can be applied to the symplectic context (something that was not possible for the previous one). As an application, we construct $C^1$ robustly transitive derived from Anosov diffeomorphisms with mixed behaviour on centre leaves.

We study locally constant skew-product maps over full shifts of finite symbols with arbitrary compact metric spaces as fiber spaces. We introduce a new criterion to determine the density of leaves of the strong unstable (and strong stable) foliation, that is, for its minimality. When the fiber space is a circle, we show that both strong foliations are minimal for an open and dense set of robustly transitive skew-products. We provide examples where either one foliation is minimal or neither is minimal. Our approach involves investigating the dynamics of the associated iterated function system (IFS). We establish the asymptotic stability of the phase space of the IFS when it is a strict attractor of the system. We also show that any transitive IFS consisting of circle diffeomorphisms that preserve orientation can be approximated by a robust forward and backward minimal, expanding, and ergodic (with respect to Lebesgue) IFS. Lastly, we provide examples of smooth robustly transitive IFSs where either the forward or the backward minimal fails, or both.

For a class of volume-preserving partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms (or non-uniformly Anosov) $f\colon {\mathbb {T}}^d\rightarrow {\mathbb {T}}^d$ homotopic to linear Anosov automorphism, we show that the sum of the positive (negative) Lyapunov exponents of f is bounded above (respectively below) by the sum of the positive (respectively negative) Lyapunov exponents of its linearization. We show this for some classes of derived from Anosov (DA) and non-uniformly hyperbolic systems with dominated splitting, in particular for examples described by Bonatti and Viana [SRB measures for partially hyperbolic systems whose central direction is mostly contracting. Israel J. Math. 115(1) (2000), 157–193]. The results in this paper address a flexibility program by Bochi, Katok and Rodriguez Hertz [Flexibility of Lyapunov exponents. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 42(2) (2022), 554–591].

For a class of robustly transitive diffeomorphisms on ${\mathbb T}^4$ introduced by Shub [Topologically transitive diffeomorphisms of $T^4$. Proceedings of the Symposium on Differential Equations and Dynamical Systems (Lecture notes in Mathematics, 206). Ed. D. Chillingworth. Springer, Berlin, 1971, pp. 39–40], satisfying an additional bunching condition, we show that there exists a $C^2$ open and $C^r$ dense subset ${\mathcal U}^r$, $2\leq r\leq \infty $, such that any two hyperbolic points of $g\in {\mathcal U}^r$ with stable index $2$ are homoclinically related. As a consequence, every $g\in {\mathcal U}^r$ admits a unique homoclinic class associated to the hyperbolic periodic points with index $2$, and this homoclinic class coincides with the whole ambient manifold. Moreover, every $g\in {\mathcal U}^r$ admits at most one measure of maximal entropy, and every $g\in {\mathcal U}^{\infty }$ admits a unique measure of maximal entropy.

In this paper, we study transitivity of partially hyperbolic endomorphisms of the two torus whose action in the first homology group has two integer eigenvalues of moduli greater than one. We prove that if the Jacobian is everywhere greater than the modulus of the largest eigenvalue, then the map is robustly transitive. For this, we introduce Blichfedt’s theorem as a tool for extracting dynamical information from the action of a map in homology. We also treat the case of specially partially hyperbolic endomorphisms, for which we obtain a complete dichotomy: either the map is transitive and conjugated to its linear part, or its unstable foliation must contain an annulus which may either be wandering or periodic.

We prove that for $C^{1+\theta }$, $\theta $-bunched, dynamically coherent partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms, the stable and unstable holonomies between center leaves are $C^1$, and the derivative depends continuously on the points and on the map. Also for $C^{1+\theta }$, $\theta $-bunched partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms, the derivative cocycle restricted to the center bundle has invariant continuous holonomies which depend continuously on the map. This generalizes previous results by Pugh, Shub, and Wilkinson; Burns and Wilkinson; Brown; Obata; Avila, Santamaria, and Viana; and Marin.

We prove that under restrictions on the fiber, any fibered partially hyperbolic system over a nilmanifold is leaf conjugate to a smooth model that is isometric on the fibers and descends to a hyperbolic nilmanifold automorphism on the base. One ingredient is a result of independent interest generalizing a result of Hiraide: an Anosov homeomorphism of a nilmanifold is topologically conjugate to a hyperbolic nilmanifold automorphism.

We give a $C^1$-perturbation technique for ejecting an a priori given finite set of periodic points preserving a given finite set of homo/heteroclinic intersections from a chain recurrence class of a periodic point. The technique is first stated under a simpler setting called a Markov iterated function system, a two-dimensional iterated function system in which the compositions are chosen in a Markovian way. Then we apply the result to the setting of three-dimensional partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms.

For every $r\in \mathbb {N}_{\geq 2}\cup \{\infty \}$, we prove a $C^r$-orbit connecting lemma for dynamically coherent and plaque expansive partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms with one-dimensional orientation preserving center bundle. To be precise, for such a diffeomorphism f, if a point y is chain attainable from x through pseudo-orbits, then for any neighborhood U of x and any neighborhood V of y, there exist true orbits from U to V by arbitrarily $C^r$-small perturbations. As a consequence, we prove that for $C^r$-generic diffeomorphisms in this class, periodic points are dense in the chain recurrent set, and chain transitivity implies transitivity.

We develop a geometric method to establish the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states associated to some Hölder potentials for center isometries (as are regular elements of Anosov actions), in particular, the entropy maximizing measure and the SRB measure. A characterization of equilibrium states in terms of their disintegrations along stable and unstable foliations is also given. Finally, we show that the resulting system is isomorphic to a Bernoulli scheme.

We give an example of a path-wise connected open set of $C^{\infty }$ partially hyperbolic endomorphisms on the $2$-torus, on which the (unique) Sinai–Ruelle–Bowen (SRB) measure exists for each system and varies smoothly depending on the system, while the sign of its central Lyapunov exponent changes.

We construct measures of maximal u-entropy for any partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism that factors over an Anosov torus automorphism and has mostly contracting center direction. The space of such measures has finite dimension, and its extreme points are ergodic measures with pairwise disjoint supports.

For typical cocycles over subshifts of finite type, we show that for any given orbit segment, we can construct a periodic orbit such that it shadows the given orbit segment and that the product of the cocycle along its orbit is a proximal linear map. Using this result, we show that suitable assumptions on the periodic orbits have consequences over the entire subshift.

In this paper, we classify the three-dimensional partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms whose stable, unstable, and central distributions $E^s$, $E^u$, and $E^c$ are smooth, such that $E^s\oplus E^u$ is a contact distribution, and whose non-wandering set equals the whole manifold. We prove that up to a finite quotient or a finite power, they are smoothly conjugated either to a time-map of an algebraic contact-Anosov flow, or to an affine partially hyperbolic automorphism of a nil-${\mathrm {Heis}}{(3)}$-manifold. The rigid geometric structure induced by the invariant distributions plays a fundamental part in the proof.

We set out some general criteria to prove the K-property, refining the assumptions used in an earlier paper for the flow case, and introducing the analogous discrete-time result. We also introduce one-sided $\lambda $-decompositions, as well as multiple techniques for checking the pressure gap required to show the K-property. We apply our results to the family of Mañé diffeomorphisms and the Katok map. Our argument builds on the orbit decomposition theory of Climenhaga and Thompson.

We outline the flexibility program in smooth dynamics, focusing on flexibility of Lyapunov exponents for volume-preserving diffeomorphisms. We prove flexibility results for Anosov diffeomorphisms admitting dominated splittings into one-dimensional bundles.

Under a suitable bunching condition, we establish that stable holonomies inside center-stable manifolds for $C^{1+\beta }$ diffeomorphisms are uniformly bi-Lipschitz and, in fact, $C^{1+\mathrm {H}\ddot{\rm o}\mathrm {lder}}$. This verifies the ergodicity of suitably center-bunched, essentially accessible, partially hyperbolic $C^{1+\beta }$ diffeomorphisms and verifies that the Ledrappier–Young entropy formula holds for $C^{1+\beta }$ diffeomorphisms of compact manifolds.

We consider $C^{r}$-diffeomorphisms ($1 \leq r \leq +\infty$) of a compact smooth manifold having two pairs of hyperbolic periodic points of different indices which admit transverse heteroclinic points and are connected through a blender. We prove that, by giving an arbitrarily $C^{r}$-small perturbation near the periodic points, we can produce a periodic point for which the first return map in the center direction coincides with the identity map up to order $r$, provided the transverse heteroclinic points satisfy certain natural conditions involving higher derivatives of their transition maps in the center direction. As a consequence, we prove that $C^{r}$-generic diffeomorphisms in a small neighborhood of the diffeomorphism under consideration exhibit super-exponential growth of number of periodic points. We also give examples which show the necessity of the conditions we assume.

In this paper, we study the centralizer of a partially hyperbolic diffeomorphism on ${\mathbb T}^3$ which is homotopic to an Anosov automorphism, and we show that either its centralizer is virtually trivial or such diffeomorphism is smoothly conjugate to its linear part.