We introduce a version of Voiculescu-Brown approximation entropy for
isometric automorphisms of Banach spaces and develop within this framework the
connection between dynamics and the local theory of Banach spaces discovered by
Glasner and Weiss. Our fundamental result concerning this contractive
approximation entropy, or CA entropy, characterizes the occurrence of positive
values both geometrically and topologically. This leads to various
applications; for example, we obtain a geometric description of the topological
Pinsker factor and show that a C*-algebra is type I if and only if every
multiplier inner *-automorphism has zero CA entropy. We also examine the
behaviour of CA entropy under various product constructions and determine its
value in many examples, including isometric automorphisms of l_p spaces and
noncommutative tensor product shifts.Comment: 33 pages; unified approach to last three sections give