An optimal transportation approach to the decay of correlations for non-uniformly expanding maps

We consider the transfer operators of non-uniformly expanding maps for potentials of various regularity, and show that a specific property of potentials ("flatness") implies a Ruelle-Perron-Frobenius Theorem and a decay of the transfer operator of the same speed than entailed by the constant potential. The method relies neither on Markov partitions nor on inducing, but on functional analysis and duality, through the simplest principles of optimal transportation. As an application, we notably show that for any map of the circle which is expanding outside an arbitrarily flat neutral point, the set of H{\"o}lder potentials exhibiting a spectral gap is dense in the uniform topology. The method applies in a variety of situation, including Pomeau-Manneville maps with regular enough potentials, or uniformly expanding maps of low regularity with their natural potential; we also recover in a united fashion variants of several previous results.Comment: v3: The published article (Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems 40, 2020) contained a significant error in Lemma 2.14, used in the core Theorem 4.1. This is a consolidated version of the article, with the error corrected (and a few other minor points improved along the way). In order to fix the error, the assumption on coupling in 4.1 needs to be slightly modified (see also Definition 2.12) and Lemma 2.14 (now numbered 2.15) has been adjusted. Section 5.1 provides a criterion to ensure this new hypothesis in our cases of interest, so that all other results are unaffected. I apologize to readers of the previous version for this embarrassing mistake, and warmly thank Manuel Stadlbauer for pointing out this error to m

On differentiable compactifications of the hyperbolic space

The group of direct isometries of the real n-dimensional hyperbolic space is G=SOo(n,1). This isometric action admits many differentiable compactifications into an action on the closed ball. We prove that all such compactifications are topologically conjugate but not necessarily differentiably conjugate. We give the classifications of real analytic and smooth compactifications.Comment: 11

On Lipschitz compactifications of trees

We study the Lipschitz structures on the geodesic compactification of a regular tree, that are preserved by the automorphism group. They are shown to be similar to the compactifications introduced by William Floyd, and a complete description is given.Comment: 6 page

Approximation by finitely supported measures

Given a compactly supported probability measure on a Riemannian manifold, we study the asymptotic speed at which it can be approximated (in Wasserstein distance of any exponent p) by finitely supported measure. This question has been studied under the names of ``quantization of distributions'' and, when p=1, ``location problem''. When p=2, it is linked with Centroidal Voronoi Tessellations.Comment: v2: the main result is extended to measures defined on a manifold. v3: references added. 25 pp. To appear in ESAIM:COC

Effective high-temperature estimates for intermittent maps

Using quantitative perturbation theory for linear operators, we prove spectral gap for transfer operators of various families of intermittent maps with almost constant potentials ("high-temperature" regime). H\"older and bounded p-variation potentials are treated, in each case under a suitable assumption on the map, but the method should apply more generally. It is notably proved that for any Pommeau-Manneville map, any potential with Lispchitz constant less than 0.0014 has a transfer operator acting on Lip([0, 1]) with a spectral gap; and that for any 2-to-1 unimodal map, any potential with total variation less than 0.0069 has a transfer operator acting on BV([0, 1]) with a spectral gap. We also prove under quite general hypotheses that the classical definition of spectral gap coincides with the formally stronger one used in (Giulietti et al. 2015), allowing all results there to be applied under the high temperature bounds proved here: analyticity of pressure and equilibrium states, central limit theorem, etc.Comment: v2: minor corrections and clarifications. To appear in ETDS; Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems, Cambridge University Press (CUP), 201

A geometric study of Wasserstein spaces: Hadamard spaces

Optimal transport enables one to construct a metric on the set of (sufficiently small at infinity) probability measures on any (not too wild) metric space X, called its Wasserstein space W(X). In this paper we investigate the geometry of W(X) when X is a Hadamard space, by which we mean that $X$ has globally non-positive sectional curvature and is locally compact. Although it is known that -except in the case of the line- W(X) is not non-positively curved, our results show that W(X) have large-scale properties reminiscent of that of X. In particular we define a geodesic boundary for W(X) that enables us to prove a non-embeddablity result: if X has the visibility property, then the Euclidean plane does not admit any isometric embedding in W(X).Comment: This second version contains only the first part of the preceeding one. The visibility properties of W(X) and the isometric rigidity have been split off to other articles after a referee's commen

The linear request problem

We propose a simple approach to a problem introduced by Galatolo and Pollicott, consisting in perturbing a dynamical system in order for its absolutely continuous invariant measure to change in a prescribed way. Instead of using transfer operators, we observe that restricting to an infinitesimal conjugacy already yields a solution. This allows us to work in any dimension and dispense from any dynamical hypothesis. In particular, we don't need to assume hyperbolicity to obtain a solution, although expansion moreover ensures the existence of an infinite-dimensional space of solutions.Comment: v2: the approach has been further simplified, only basic differential calculus is in fact needed instead of basic PD

The Cartan-Hadamard conjecture and The Little Prince

The generalized Cartan-Hadamard conjecture says that if $\Omega$ is a domain with fixed volume in a complete, simply connected Riemannian $n$-manifold $M$ with sectional curvature $K \le \kappa \le 0$, then the boundary of $\Omega$ has the least possible boundary volume when $\Omega$ is a round $n$-ball with constant curvature $K=\kappa$. The case $n=2$ and $\kappa=0$ is an old result of Weil. We give a unified proof of this conjecture in dimensions $n=2$ and $n=4$ when $\kappa=0$, and a special case of the conjecture for \kappa \textless{} 0 and a version for \kappa \textgreater{} 0. Our argument uses a new interpretation, based on optical transport, optimal transport, and linear programming, of Croke's proof for $n=4$ and $\kappa=0$. The generalization to $n=4$ and $\kappa \ne 0$ is a new result. As Croke implicitly did, we relax the curvature condition $K \le \kappa$ to a weaker candle condition $Candle(\kappa)$ or $LCD(\kappa)$.We also find counterexamples to a na\"ive version of the Cartan-Hadamard conjecture: For every \varepsilon \textgreater{} 0, there is a Riemannian 3-ball $\Omega$ with $(1-\varepsilon)$-pinched negative curvature, and with boundary volume bounded by a function of $\varepsilon$ and with arbitrarily large volume.We begin with a pointwise isoperimetric problem called "the problem of the Little Prince." Its proof becomes part of the more general method.Comment: v3: significant rewritting of some proofs, a mistake in the proof of the ball counter-example has been correcte