Symplectic Geometry of the Koopman Operator

We consider the Koopman operator generated by an invertible transformation of a space with a finite countably additive measure. If the square of this transformation is ergodic, then the orthogonal Koopman operator is a symplectic transformation on the real Hilbert space of square summable functions with zero mean. An infinite set of quadratic invariants of the Koopman operator is specified, which are pairwise in involution with respect to the corresponding symplectic structure. For transformations with a discrete spectrum and a Lebesgue spectrum, these quadratic invariants are functionally independent and form a complete involutive set, which suggests that the Koopman transform is completely integrable.

Commutator methods for the spectral analysis of uniquely ergodic dynamical systems

We present a method, based on commutator methods, for the spectral analysis of uniquely ergodic dynamical systems. When applicable, it leads to the absolute continuity of the spectrum of the corresponding unitary operators. As an illustration, we consider time changes of horocycle flows, skew products over translations and Furstenberg transformations. For time changes of horocycle flows we obtain absolute continuity under assumptions weaker than those to be found in the literature, and for skew products over translations and Furstenberg transformations we obtain countable Lebesgue spectrum under assumptions not previously covered in the literature.

On the entropy of actions of nilpotent Lie groups and their lattice subgroups

We consider a natural class $\mathcal {ULG}$ of connected, simply connected nilpotent Lie groups which contains ℝn, the group $\mathcal {UT}_n(\mathbb {R})$ of all triangular unipotent matrices over ℝ and many of its subgroups, and is closed under direct products. If $G \in \mathcal {ULG}$, then $\Gamma _1 = G\cap \mathcal {UT}_n(\mathbb {Z})$ is a lattice subgroup of G. We prove that if $G \in \mathcal {ULG}$ and Γ is a lattice subgroup of G, then a free ergodic measure-preserving action T of G on a probability space (X,ℬ,μ) has completely positive entropy (CPE) if and only if the restriction TΓ of T to Γ has CPE. We can deduce from this the following version of a well-known conjecture in this case: the action T has CPE if and only if T is uniformly mixing. Moreover, such T has a Lebesgue spectrum with infinite multiplicity. We further consider an ergodic free action T with positive entropy and suppose TΓ is ergodic for any lattice subgroup Γ of G. This holds, in particular, if the spectrum of T does not contain a discrete component. Then we show the Pinsker algebra Π(T) of T exists and coincides with the Pinsker algebras Π(TΓ) of TΓ for any lattice subgroup Γ of G. In this case, T always has Lebesgue spectrum with infinite multiplicity on the space ℒ20(X,μ)⊖ℒ20(Π(T)) , where ℒ20(Π(T)) contains all Π(T) -measurable functions from ℒ20(X,μ) . To prove these results, we use the following formula: h(T)=∣G(Γ)∣−1hK (TΓ) , where h(T) is the Ornstein–Weiss entropy of T, hK (TΓ) is a Kolmogorov–Sinai entropy of TΓ, and the number ∣G(TΓ)∣ is the Haar measure of the compact subset G(Γ) of G. In particular, h(T)=hK (TΓ1) , and hK (TΓ1)=∣G(Γ)∣−1hK (TΓ) . The last relation is an analogue of the Abramov formula for flows.