Absolute continuity, Lyapunov exponents, and rigidity II: systems with compact center leaves

We explore new connections between the dynamics of conservative partially hyperbolic systems and the geometric measure-theoretic properties of their invariant foliations. Our methods are applied to two main classes of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms: fibered partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms and center-fixing partially hyperbolic systems. When the center is one-dimensional, assuming the diffeomorphism is accessible, we prove that the disintegration of the volume measure along the center foliation is either atomic or Lebesgue. Moreover, the latter case is rigid in dimension three (this does not require accessibility): the center foliation is actually smooth and the diffeomorphism is smoothly conjugate to an explicit rigid model. A partial extension to fibered partially hyperbolic systems with compact fibers of any dimension is also obtained. A common feature of these classes of diffeomorphisms is that the center leaves either are compact or can be made compact by taking an appropriate dynamically defined quotient. For volume-preserving partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms whose center foliation is absolutely continuous, if the generic center leaf is a circle, then every center leaf is compact.

Eigenvalues of the weighted Laplacian under the extended Ricci flow

Let ∆φ = ∆ − ∇φ∇ be a symmetric diffusion operator with an invariant weighted volume measure dμ = e−φ dν on an n-dimensional compact Riemannian manifold (M, g), where g = g(t) solves the extended Ricci flow. We study the evolution and monotonicity of the first nonzero eigenvalue of ∆φ and we obtain several monotone quantities along the extended Ricci flow and its volume preserving version under some technical assumption. We also show that the eigenvalues diverge in a finite time for n ≥ 3. Our results are natural extensions of some known results for Laplace–Beltrami operators under various geometric flows.

Stability of gas measures under perturbations and discretizations

For a general class of gas models — which includes discrete and continuous Gibbsian models as well as contour or polymer ensembles — we determine a diluteness condition that implies: (1) uniqueness of the infinite-volume equilibrium measure; (2) stability of this measure under perturbations of parameters and discretization schemes, and (3) existence of a coupled perfect-simulation scheme for the infinite-volume measure together with its perturbations and discretizations. Some of these results have previously been obtained through methods based on cluster expansions. In contrast, our treatment is purely probabilistic and its diluteness condition is weaker than existing convergence conditions for cluster expansions.