Let $(X_k)_{k\geq 0}$ be a stationary and ergodic process with joint distribution $\mu $ , where the random variables $X_k$ take values in a finite set $\mathcal {A}$ . Let $R_n$ be the first time this process repeats its first n symbols of output. It is well known that $({1}/{n})\log R_n$ converges almost surely to the entropy of the process. Refined properties of $R_n$ (large deviations, multifractality, etc) are encoded in the return-time $L^q$ -spectrum defined as

provided the limit exists. We consider the case where $(X_k)_{k\geq 0}$ is distributed according to the equilibrium state of a potential with summable variation, and we prove that

where $P((1-q)\varphi )$ is the topological pressure of $(1-q)\varphi $ , the supremum is taken over all shift-invariant measures, and $q_\varphi ^*$ is the unique solution of $P((1-q)\varphi ) =\sup _\eta \int \varphi \,d\eta $ . Unexpectedly, this spectrum does not coincide with the $L^q$ -spectrum of $\mu _\varphi $ , which is $P((1-q)\varphi )$ , and it does not coincide with the waiting-time $L^q$ -spectrum in general. In fact, the return-time $L^q$ -spectrum coincides with the waiting-time $L^q$ -spectrum if and only if the equilibrium state of $\varphi $ is the measure of maximal entropy. As a by-product, we also improve the large deviation asymptotics of $({1}/{n})\log R_n$ .

We investigate dynamical systems consisting of a locally compact Hausdorff space equipped with a partially defined local homeomorphism. Important examples of such systems include self-covering maps, one-sided shifts of finite type and, more generally, the boundary-path spaces of directed and topological graphs. We characterize the topological conjugacy of these systems in terms of isomorphisms of their associated groupoids and C*-algebras. This significantly generalizes recent work of Matsumoto and of the second- and third-named authors.

Every topological group G has, up to isomorphism, a unique minimal G-flow that maps onto every minimal G-flow, the universal minimal flow $M(G).$ We show that if G has a compact normal subgroup K that acts freely on $M(G)$ and there exists a uniformly continuous cross-section from $G/K$ to $G,$ then the phase space of $M(G)$ is homeomorphic to the product of the phase space of $M(G/K)$ with K. Moreover, if either the left and right uniformities on G coincide or G is isomorphic to a semidirect product $G/K\ltimes K$ , we also recover the action, in the latter case extending a result of Kechris and Sokić. As an application, we show that the phase space of $M(G)$ for any totally disconnected locally compact Polish group G with a normal open compact subgroup is homeomorphic to a finite set, the Cantor set $2^{\mathbb {N}}$ , $M(\mathbb {Z})$ , or $M(\mathbb {Z})\times 2^{\mathbb {N}}.$

For the family of double standard maps $f_{a,b}=2x+a+({b}/{\pi }) \sin 2\pi x \pmod {1}$ we investigate the structure of the space of parameters a when $b=1$ and when $b\in [0,1)$. In the first case the maps have a critical point, but for a set of parameters $E_1$ of positive Lebesgue measure there is an invariant absolutely continuous measure for $f_{a,1}$. In the second case there is an open non-empty set $E_b$ of parameters for which the map $f_{a,b}$ is expanding. We show that as $b\nearrow 1$, the set $E_b$ accumulates on many points of $E_1$ in a regular way from the measure point of view.

We consider a robust class of random non-uniformly expanding local homeomorphisms and Hölder continuous potentials with small variation. For each element of this class we develop the thermodynamical formalism and prove the existence and uniqueness of equilibrium states among non-uniformly expanding measures. Moreover, we show that these equilibrium states and the random topological pressure vary continuously in this setting.

We construct one-dimensional foliations which are subfoliations of two-dimensional foliations in $3$ -manifolds. The subfoliation is by quasigeodesics in each two-dimensional leaf, but it is not funnel: not all quasigeodesics share a common ideal point in most leaves.

We generalize a result of Lindenstrauss on the interplay between measurable and topological dynamics which shows that every separable ergodic measurably distal dynamical system has a minimal distal model. We show that such a model can, in fact, be chosen completely canonically. The construction is performed by going through the Furstenberg–Zimmer tower of a measurably distal system and showing that at each step there is a simple and canonical distal minimal model. This hinges on a new characterization of isometric extensions in topological dynamics.

This is the first paper in a two-part series containing some results on dimension estimates for $C^1$ iterated function systems and repellers. In this part, we prove that the upper box-counting dimension of the attractor of any $C^1$ iterated function system (IFS) on ${\Bbb R}^d$ is bounded above by its singularity dimension, and the upper packing dimension of any ergodic invariant measure associated with this IFS is bounded above by its Lyapunov dimension. Similar results are obtained for the repellers for $C^1$ expanding maps on Riemannian manifolds.

Dirichlet’s theorem, including the uniform setting and asymptotic setting, is one of the most fundamental results in Diophantine approximation. The improvement of the asymptotic setting leads to the well-approximable set (in words of continued fractions)

$$ \begin{align*} \mathcal{K}(\Phi):=\{x:a_{n+1}(x)\ge\Phi(q_{n}(x))\ \textrm{for infinitely many }n\in \mathbb{N}\}; \end{align*} $$

$$ \begin{align*} \mathcal{G}(\Phi):=\{x:a_{n}(x)a_{n+1}(x)\ge\Phi(q_{n}(x))\ \textrm{for infinitely many }n\in \mathbb{N}\}. \end{align*} $$

$\Phi _{1},\Phi _{2}:[1,+\infty )\rightarrow \mathbb {R}^{+}$

$\mathcal {G}(\Phi _{1})\!\setminus\! \mathcal {K}(\Phi _{2})$

$\mathcal {G}(\Phi )$

$\mathcal {K}(\Phi )$

$\Phi $

$\mathcal {G}(\Phi _{1})\!\setminus\! \mathcal {K}(\Phi _{2})$

$\Phi _1$

Baker and Rumely, Favre, Rivera, and Letelier, and Chambert-Loir proved an important arithmetic equidistribution theorem for points of small height associated to an adelic measure. To broaden the scope in which arithmetic equidistribution may be employed, we generalize the notion of an adelic measure to that of a quasi-adelic measure and show that arithmetic equidistribution holds for quasi-adelic measures as well. We exhibit examples of non-adelic, quasi-adelic measures arising from the dynamics of quadratic rational maps. In fact, we show that the measures that arise in applications of arithmetic equidistribution theorems are typically not adelic. Finally, we motivate our definition of a quasi-adelic measure by relating it to a seemingly different problem in arithmetic dynamics arising from results of Call, Tate, and Silverman in the study of abelian varieties.

We prove effective equidistribution of horospherical flows in $\operatorname {SO}(n,1)^{\circ } / \Gamma $ when $\Gamma $ is geometrically finite and the frame flow is exponentially mixing for the Bowen–Margulis–Sullivan measure. We also discuss settings in which such an exponential mixing result is known to hold. As part of the proof, we show that the Patterson–Sullivan measure satisfies some friendly like properties when $\Gamma $ is geometrically finite.