We consider products of an independent and identically distributed sequence in a set $\{f_1,\ldots ,f_m\}$ of orientation-preserving diffeomorphisms of the circle. We can naturally associate a Lyapunov exponent $\lambda $ . Under few assumptions, it is known that $\lambda \leq 0$ and that the equality holds if and only if $f_1,\ldots ,f_m$ are simultaneously conjugated to rotations. In this paper, we state a quantitative version of this fact in the case where $f_1,\ldots ,f_m$ are $C^k$ perturbations of rotations with rotation numbers $\rho (f_1),\ldots ,\rho (f_m)$ satisfying a simultaneous diophantine condition in the sense of Moser [On commuting circle mappings and simultaneous diophantine approximations. Math. Z.205(1) (1990), 105–121]: we give a precise estimate of $\lambda $ (Taylor expansion) and we prove that there exist a diffeomorphism g and rotations $r_i$ such that $\mbox {dist}(gf_ig^{-1},r_i)\ll |\lambda |^{{1}/{2}}$ for $i=1,\ldots , m$ . We also state analogous results for random products of $2\times 2$ matrices, without any diophantine condition.

For a sequence of complex parameters $(c_n)$ we consider the composition of functions $f_{c_n} (z) = z^2 + c_n$ , the non-autonomous version of the classical quadratic dynamical system. The definitions of Julia and Fatou sets are naturally generalized to this setting. We answer a question posed by Brück, Büger and Reitz, whether the Julia set for such a sequence is almost always totally disconnected, if the values $c_n$ are chosen randomly from a large disc. Our proof is easily generalized to answer a lot of other related questions regarding typical connectivity of the random Julia set. In fact we prove the statement for a much larger family of sets than just discs; in particular if one picks $c_n$ randomly from the main cardioid of the Mandelbrot set, then the Julia set is still almost always totally disconnected.

For random piecewise linear systems T of the interval that are expanding on average we construct explicitly the density functions of absolutely continuous T-invariant measures. If the random system uses only expanding maps our procedure produces all invariant densities of the system. Examples include random tent maps, random W-shaped maps, random $\beta $ -transformations and random Lüroth maps with a hole.

Consider an ergodic Markov chain on a countable state space for which the return times have exponential tails. We show that the stationary version of any such chain is a finitary factor of an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) process. A key step is to show that any stationary renewal process whose jump distribution has exponential tails and is not supported on a proper subgroup of ${\mathbb {Z}}$ is a finitary factor of an i.i.d. process.

We prove a conditional theorem on the positivity of the Lyapunov exponent for a Schrödinger cocycle over a skew-shift base with a cosine potential and the golden ratio as frequency. For coupling below 1, which is the threshold for Herman’s subharmonicity trick, we formulate three conditions on the Lyapunov exponent in a finite but large volume and on the associated large-deviation estimates at that scale. Our main results demonstrate that these finite-size conditions imply the positivity of the infinite-volume Lyapunov exponent. This paper shows that it is possible to make the techniques developed for the study of Schrödinger operators with deterministic potentials, based on large-deviation estimates and the avalanche principle, effective.

We consider a class of skew product maps of interval diffeomorphisms over the doubling map. The interval maps fix the end points of the interval. It is assumed that the system has zero fiber Lyapunov exponent at one endpoint and zero or positive fiber Lyapunov exponent at the other endpoint. We prove the appearance of on–off intermittency. This is done using the equivalent description of chaotic walks: random walks driven by the doubling map. The analysis further relies on approximating the chaotic walks by Markov random walks, that are constructed using Markov partitions for the doubling map.

The study of the dynamics of an holomorphic map near a fixed point is a central topic in complex dynamical systems. In this paper, we will consider the corresponding random setting: given a probability measure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$ with compact support on the space of germs of holomorphic maps fixing the origin, we study the compositions $f_{n}\circ \cdots \circ f_{1}$, where each $f_{i}$ is chosen independently with probability $\unicode[STIX]{x1D708}$. As in the deterministic case, the stability of the family of the random iterates is mostly determined by the linear part of the germs in the support of the measure. A particularly interesting case occurs when all Lyapunov exponents vanish, in which case stability implies simultaneous linearizability of all germs in $\text{supp}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D708})$.

We construct random dynamics for collections of nonintersecting planar contours, leaving invariant the distributions of length- and area-interacting polygonal Markov fields with V-shaped nodes. The first of these dynamics is based on the dynamic construction of consistent polygonal fields, as presented in the original articles by Arak (1983) and Arak and Surgailis (1989), (1991), and it provides an easy-to-implement Metropolis-type simulation algorithm. The second dynamics leads to a graphical construction in the spirit of Fernández et al. (1998), (2002) and yields a perfect simulation scheme in a finite window in the infinite-volume limit. This algorithm seems difficult to implement, yet its value lies in that it allows for theoretical analysis of the thermodynamic limit behaviour of length-interacting polygonal fields. The results thus obtained include, in the class of infinite-volume Gibbs measures without infinite contours, the uniqueness and exponential α-mixing of the thermodynamic limit of such fields in the low-temperature region. Outside this class, we conjecture the existence of an infinite number of extreme phases breaking both the translational and rotational symmetries.