An Alternative Approach to Generalised BV and the Application to Expanding Interval Maps

We introduce a family of Banach spaces of measures, each containing the set of measures with density of bounded variation. These spaces are suitable for the study of weighted transfer operators of piecewise-smooth maps of the interval where the weighting used in the transfer operator is not better than piecewise H\"older continuous and the partition on which the map is continuous may possess a countable number of elements. For such weighted transfer operators we give upper bounds for both the spectral radius and for the essential spectral radius

A Note on Operator Semigroups Associated to Chaotic Flows

The transfer operator associated to a flow (continuous time dynamical system) is a one-parameter operator semigroup. We consider the operator-valued Laplace transform of this one-parameter semigroup. Estimates on the Laplace transform have be used in various settings in order to show the rate at which the flow mixes. Here we consider the case of exponential mixing or rapid mixing (super polynomial). We develop the operator theory framework amenable to this setting and show that the same estimates may be used to produce results, in terms of the operators, which go beyond the results for the rate of mixing. Such results are useful for obtaining other statistical properties of the dynamical system

Open sets of Axiom A flows with Exponentially Mixing Attractors (with Erratum)

For any dimension $d\geq 3$ we construct $C^{1}$-open subsets of the space of $C^{3}$ vector fields such that the flow associated to each vector field is Axiom A and exhibits a non-trivial attractor which mixes exponentially with respect to the unique SRB measure.Comment: 15 pages, no figures; content as published in journal; includes text of the Erratum as an appendi

Parabolic Flows Renormalized by Partially Hyperbolic Maps

We consider parabolic flows on 3-dimensional manifolds which are renormalized by circle extensions of Anosov diffeormorphisms. This class of flows includes nilflows on the Heisenberg nilmanifold which are renormalized by partially hyperbolic automorphisms. The transfer operators associated to the renormalization maps, acting on anisotropic Sobolev spaces, are known to have good spectral properties (this relies on ideas which have some resemblance to representation theory but also apply to non-algebraic systems). The spectral information is used to describe the deviation of ergodic averages and solutions of the cohomological equation for the parabolic flow.Comment: Comments welcom

Expanding Semiflows on Branched Surfaces and One-Parameter Semigroups of Operators

We consider expanding semiflows on branched surfaces. The family of transfer operators associated to the semiflow is a one-parameter semigroup of operators. The transfer operators may also be viewed as an operator-valued function of time and so, in the appropriate norm, we may consider the vector-valued Laplace transform of this function. We obtain a spectral result on these operators and relate this to the spectrum of the generator of this semigroup. Issues of strong continuity of the semigroup are avoided. The main result is the improvement to the machinery associated with studying semiflows as one-parameter semigroups of operators and the study of the smoothness properties of semiflows defined on branched manifolds, without encoding as a suspension semiflow

S-DIMM+ height characterization of day-time seeing using solar granulation

To evaluate site quality and to develop multi-conjugative adaptive optics systems for future large solar telescopes, characterization of contributions to seeing from heights up to at least 12 km above the telescope is needed. We describe a method for evaluating contributions to seeing from different layers along the line-of-sight to the Sun. The method is based on Shack Hartmann wavefront sensor data recorded over a large field-of-view with solar granulation and uses only measurements of differential image displacements from individual exposures, such that the measurements are not degraded by residual tip-tilt errors. We conclude that the proposed method allows good measurements when Fried's parameter r_0 is larger than about 7.5 cm for the ground layer and that these measurements should provide valuable information for site selection and multi-conjugate development for the future European Solar Telescope. A major limitation is the large field of view presently used for wavefront sensing, leading to uncomfortably large uncertainties in r_0 at 30 km distance.Comment: Accepted by AA 22/01/2010 (12 pages, 11 figures