Chain recurrence, chain transitivity, Lyapunov functions and rigidity of Lagrangian submanifolds of optical hypersurfaces

The aim of this paper is twofold. On the one hand, we discuss the notions of strong chain recurrence and strong chain transitivity for flows on metric spaces, together with their characterizations in terms of rigidity properties of Lipschitz Lyapunov functions. This part extends to flows some recent results for homeomorphisms of Fathi and Pageault. On the other hand, we use these characterisations to revisit the proof of a theorem of Paternain, Polterovich and Siburg concerning the inner rigidity of a Lagrangian submanifold $\Lambda$ contained in an optical hypersurface of a cotangent bundle, under the assumption that the dynamics on $\Lambda$ is strongly chain recurrent. We also prove an outer rigidity result for such a Lagrangian submanifold $\Lambda$, under the stronger assumption that the dynamics on $\Lambda$ is strongly chain transitive.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure

Mixing-like properties for some generic and robust dynamics

We show that the set of Bernoulli measures of an isolated topologically mixing homoclinic class of a generic diffeomorphism is a dense subset of the set of invariant measures supported on the class. For this, we introduce the large periods property and show that this is a robust property for these classes. We also show that the whole manifold is a homoclinic class for an open and dense subset of the set of robustly transitive diffeomorphisms far away from homoclinic tangencies. In particular, using results from Abdenur and Crovisier, we obtain that every diffeomorphism in this subset is robustly topologically mixing

Attractors in spacetimes and time functions

We develop a new approach to the existence of time functions on Lorentzian manifolds, based on Conley's work regarding Lyapunov functions for dynamical systems. We recover Hawking's result that a stably causal admits a time function through a more general result giving the existence of a continuous function that is non decreasing along all future directed causal curves, and increasing along such curves that lie outside a special region of the spacetime, called the chain recurrent set, which is empty for stably causal spacetimes. The construction is based on a notion of attractive sets in spacetimes.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure

Partial hyperbolicity far from homoclinic bifurcations

We prove that any diffeomorphism of a compact manifold can be C^1-approximated by a diffeomorphism which exhibits a homoclinic bifurcation (a homoclinic tangency or a heterodimensional cycle) or by a diffeomorphism which is partially hyperbolic (its chain-recurrent set splits into partially hyperbolic pieces whose centre bundles have dimensions less or equal to two). We also study in a more systematic way the central models introduced in arXiv:math/0605387

Rate of Converrgence for ergodic continuous Markov processes : Lyapunov versus Poincare

We study the relationship between two classical approaches for quantitative ergodic properties : the first one based on Lyapunov type controls and popularized by Meyn and Tweedie, the second one based on functional inequalities (of Poincar\'e type). We show that they can be linked through new inequalities (Lyapunov-Poincar\'e inequalities). Explicit examples for diffusion processes are studied, improving some results in the literature. The example of the kinetic Fokker-Planck equation recently studied by H\'erau-Nier, Helffer-Nier and Villani is in particular discussed in the final section