Equilibrium Measures for Maps with Inducing Schemes

We introduce a class of continuous maps f of a compact metric space I admitting inducing schemes and describe the tower constructions associated with them. We then establish a thermodynamical formalism, i.e., describe a class of real-valued potential functions \phi on I which admit unique equilibrium measures \mu_\phi minimizing the free energy for a certain class of measures. We also describe ergodic properties of equilibrium measures including decay of correlation and the Central Limit Theorem. Our results apply in particular to some one-dimensional unimodal and multimodal maps as well as to multidimensional nonuniformly hyperbolic maps admitting Young's tower. Examples of potential functions to which our theory applies include \phi_t=-t\log|df| with t\in(t_0, t_1) for some t_0<1<t_1. In the particular case of S-unimodal maps we show that one can choose t_0<0 and that the class of measures under consideration comprises all invariant Borel probability measures. Thus our results establish existence and uniqueness of both the measure of maximal entropy (by a different method than Hofbauer) and the absolutely continuous invariant measure extending results by Bruin and Keller for the parameters under consideration

Dimension and product structure of hyperbolic measures

We prove that every hyperbolic measure invariant under a C^{1+\alpha} diffeomorphism of a smooth Riemannian manifold possesses asymptotically ``almost'' local product structure, i.e., its density can be approximated by the product of the densities on stable and unstable manifolds up to small exponentials. This has not been known even for measures supported on locally maximal hyperbolic sets. Using this property of hyperbolic measures we prove the long-standing Eckmann-Ruelle conjecture in dimension theory of smooth dynamical systems: the pointwise dimension of every hyperbolic measure invariant under a C^{1+\alpha} diffeomorphism exists almost everywhere. This implies the crucial fact that virtually all the characteristics of dimension type of the measure (including the Hausdorff dimension, box dimension, and information dimension) coincide. This provides the rigorous mathematical justification of the concept of fractal dimension for hyperbolic measures.Comment: 29 pages, published versio

Non-stationary non-uniform hyperbolicity: SRB measures for dissipative maps

We prove the existence of SRB measures for diffeomorphisms where a positive volume set of initial conditions satisfy an "effective hyperbolicity" condition that guarantees certain recurrence conditions on the iterates of Lebesgue measure. We give examples of systems that do not admit a dominated splitting but can be shown to have SRB measures using our methods.Comment: 54 pages, significant restructuring of exposition and reorganization of proofs for clarity. Main results remain the sam