arXiv subjects

Daniel J. Thompson

Publications and source records attributed to Daniel J. Thompson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Thermodynamic formalism for non-compact systems with expansivity and specification

We develop the theory of equilibrium states via specification properties for a wide class of continuous flows on complete separable metric spaces. We provide general dynamical criteria which guarantee that there is a unique equilibrium state. This measure is ergodic and satisfies a Gibbs property. Our framework applies to the geodesic flow over negatively curved manifolds beyond the pinched setting. These results also apply beyond the smooth setting to geodesic flows over locally CAT(-1) spaces. Since our phase space is non-compact, we need to establish all the basic definitions and results to make this theory work, including a suitable notion of topological pressure and the variational principle. We introduce the notion of a coherent family of metrics, which captures the properties of a natural family of metrics in our geodesic flow examples which are essential for dealing with cusps. We define Strong Positive Recurrence in this setting and establish it as a criterion to prove the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium state.

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arXiv2026

The specification approach to equilibrium states for parabolic rational maps

We develop the specification and orbit-decomposition approach to equilibrium states for parabolic rational maps of the Riemann Sphere. Our result extends the well-known results on uniqueness of equilibrium states in this setting, notably the results of Denker, Przytycki and Urba\'nski. We extend the class of potentials from H\"older to those with the Bowen property on 'good orbits' . We obtain uniqueness of the equilibrium state for potentials satisfying a pressure gap condition which is sharp in the class of potentials we consider. We show that our equilibrium state has the $K$-property, and in particular it has positive entropy. When the potential is H\"older, the theory of equilibrium states is already highly developed. Nevertheless, several interesting results on equilibrium states for H\"older potentials follow readily from our approach. In the family of geometric potentials, we obtain a simple proof of uniqueness of equilibrium states up to the phase transition that occurs at the Hausdorff dimension of the Julia set. For H\"older potentials on parabolic rational maps, we show that hyperbolicity of the potential is equivalent to having a unique equilibrium state which is fully supported. This does not appear to have been stated in the literature before, although it may be considered folklore.

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arXiv2023

Gibbs measures for geodesic flow on CAT(-1) spaces

For a proper geodesically complete CAT(-1) space equipped with a discrete non-elementary action, and a bounded continuous potential with the Bowen property, we construct weighted quasi-conformal Patterson densities and use them to build a Gibbs measure on the space of geodesic lines. Our construction yields a Gibbs measure with local product structure for any potential in this class, which includes bounded H\"older continuous potentials. Furthermore, if the Gibbs measure is finite, then we prove that it is the unique equilibrium state. In contrast to previous results in this direction, we do not require any condition that the potential must take the same value on two geodesic lines which share a common segment.

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arXiv2021

Fluctuations of time averages around closed geodesics in non-positive curvature

We consider the geodesic flow for a rank one non-positive curvature closed manifold. We prove an asymptotic version of the Central Limit Theorem for families of measures constructed from regular closed geodesics converging to the Bowen-Margulis-Knieper measure of maximal entropy. The technique expands on ideas of Denker, Senti and Zhang, who proved this type of asymptotic Lindeberg Central Limit Theorem on periodic orbits for expansive maps with the specification property. We extend these techniques from the uniform to the non-uniform setting, and from discrete-time to continuous-time. We consider Hölder observables subject only to the Lindeberg condition and a weak positive variance condition. If we assume a natural strengthened positive variance condition, the Lindeberg condition is always satisfied. Our results extend to dynamical arrays of Hölder observables, and to weighted periodic orbit measures which converge to a unique equilibrium state.

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arXiv2021

Equilibrium states for self-products of flows and the mixing properties of rank 1 geodesic flows

Equilibrium states for geodesic flows over closed rank 1 manifolds were studied recently by Burns, Climenhaga, Fisher and Thompson. For sufficiently regular potentials, it was shown that if the singular set does not carry full pressure then the equilibrium state is unique. The main result of this paper is that these equilibrium states have the Kolmogorov property. In particular, these measures are mixing of all orders and have positive entropy. For the Bowen-Margulis measure, we go further and obtain the Bernoulli property from the K-property using classic arguments from Ornstein theory. Our argument for the K-property is based on an idea due to Ledrappier. We prove uniqueness of equilibrium states on the product of the system with itself. To carry this out, we develop techniques for uniqueness of equilibrium states which apply in the presence of the 2-dimensional center direction which appears for a product of flows. This is a key technical challenge of this paper.

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arXiv2021

Measures of maximal entropy on subsystems of topological suspension semi-flows

Given a compact topological dynamical system (X, f) with positive entropy and upper semi-continuous entropy map, and any closed invariant subset $Y \subset X$ with positive entropy, we show that there exists a continuous roof function such that the set of measures of maximal entropy for the suspension semi-flow over (X,f) consists precisely of the lifts of measures which maximize entropy on Y. This result has a number of implications for the possible size of the set of measures of maximal entropy for topological suspension flows. In particular, for a suspension flow on the full shift on a finite alphabet, the set of ergodic measures of maximal entropy may be countable, uncountable, or have any finite cardinality.

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arXiv2020

Beyond Bowen's Specification Property

A classical result in thermodynamic formalism is that for uniformly hyperbolic systems, every Hölder continuous potential has a unique equilibrium state. One proof of this fact is due to Rufus Bowen and uses the fact that such systems satisfy expansivity and specification properties. In these notes, we survey recent progress that uses generalizations of these properties to extend Bowen's arguments beyond uniform hyperbolicity, including applications to partially hyperbolic systems and geodesic flows beyond negative curvature. We include a new criterion for uniqueness of equilibrium states for partially hyperbolic systems with 1-dimensional center.

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arXiv2019

The weak specification property for geodesic flows on CAT(-1) spaces

We prove that the geodesic flow on a compact locally CAT(-1) space has the weak specification property, and give various applications. We show that every Hölder potential on the space of geodesics has a unique equilibrium state. We establish the equidistribution of weighted periodic orbits and the large deviations principle for all such measures. The thermodynamic results are proved for the class of expansive flows with weak specification.

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arXiv2019

Measures of maximal entropy for suspension flows over the full shift

We consider suspension flows with continuous roof function over the full shift $Σ$ on a finite alphabet. For any positive entropy subshift of finite type $Y \subset Σ$, we explictly construct a roof function such that the measure(s) of maximal entropy for the suspension flow over $Σ$ are exactly the lifts of the measure(s) of maximal entropy for $Y$. In the case when $Y$ is transitive, this gives a unique measure of maximal entropy for the flow which is not fully supported. If $Y$ has more than one transitive component, all with the same entropy, this gives explicit examples of suspension flows over the full shift with multiple measures of maximal entropy. This contrasts with the case of a Hölder continuous roof function where it is well known the measure of maximal entropy is unique and fully supported.

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arXiv2018

Unique equilibrium states for geodesic flows in nonpositive curvature

We study geodesic flows over compact rank 1 manifolds and prove that sufficiently regular potential functions have unique equilibrium states if the singular set does not carry full pressure. In dimension 2, this proves uniqueness for scalar multiples of the geometric potential on the interval $(-\infty,1)$, which is optimal. In higher dimensions, we obtain the same result on a neighborhood of 0, and give examples where uniqueness holds on all of $\mathbb{R}$. For general potential functions $φ$, we prove that the pressure gap holds whenever $φ$ is locally constant on a neighborhood of the singular set, which allows us to give examples for which uniqueness holds on a $C^0$-open and dense set of Hölder potentials.

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arXiv2018

Strong symbolic dynamics for geodesic flow on CAT(-1) spaces and other metric Anosov flows

We prove that the geodesic flow on a locally CAT(-1) metric space which is compact, or more generally convex cocompact with non-elementary fundamental group, can be coded by a suspension flow over an irreducible shift of finite type with H\"older roof function. This is achieved by showing that the geodesic flow is a metric Anosov flow, and obtaining H\"older regularity of return times for a special class of geometrically constructed local cross-sections to the flow. We obtain a number of strong results on the dynamics of the flow with respect to equilibrium measures for H\"older potentials. In particular, we prove that the Bowen-Margulis measure is Bernoulli except for the exceptional case that all closed orbit periods are integer multiples of a common constant. We show that our techniques also extend to the geodesic flow associated to a projective Anosov representation, which verifies that the full power of symbolic dynamics is available in that setting.

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arXiv2017

Generalized beta-transformations and the entropy of unimodal maps

Generalized beta-transformations are the class of piecewise continuous interval maps given by taking the beta-transformation $x \mapsto βx ~\pmod 1$, where $β>1$, and replacing some of the branches with branches of constant negative slope. If the orbit of 1 is finite, then the map is Markov, and we call beta (which must be an algebraic number) a generalized Parry number. We show that the Galois conjugates of such beta have modulus less than 2, and the modulus is bounded away from 2 apart from the exceptional case of conjugates lying on the real line. We give a characterization of the closure of all these Galois conjugates, and show that this set is path connected. Our approach is based on an analysis of Solomyak for the case of beta-transformations. One motivation for this work is that the entropy of a post-critically finite (PCF) unimodal map is the logarithm of a generalized Parry number. Thus, our results give a mild restriction on the set of entropies that can be attained by PCF unimodal maps.

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arXiv2016

Unique equilibrium states for flows and homeomorphisms with non-uniform structure

Using an approach due to Bowen, Franco showed that continuous expansive flows with specification have unique equilibrium states for potentials with the Bowen property. We show that this conclusion remains true using weaker non-uniform versions of specification, expansivity, and the Bowen property. We also establish a corresponding result for homeomorphisms. In the homeomorphism case, we obtain the upper bound from the level-2 large deviations principle for the unique equilibrium state. The theory presented in this paper provides the basis for an ongoing program to develop the thermodynamic formalism in partially hyperbolic and non-uniformly hyperbolic settings.

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arXiv2015

Large deviations for systems with non-uniform structure

We use a weak Gibbs property and a weak form of specification to derive level-2 large deviations principles for symbolic systems equipped with a large class of reference measures. This has applications to a broad class of symbolic systems, including $β$-shifts, $S$-gap shifts, and their factors. A crucial step in our approach is to prove a `horseshoe theorem' for these systems.

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arXiv2014

Coding Sequence Density Estimation Via Topological Pressure

We give a new approach to coding sequence (CDS) density estimation in genomic analysis based on the topological pressure, which we develop from a well known concept in ergodic theory. Topological pressure measures the "weighted information content" of a finite word, and incorporates 64 parameters which can be interpreted as a choice of weight for each nucleotide triplet. We train the parameters so that the topological pressure fits the observed coding sequence density on the human genome, and use this to give ab initio predictions of CDS density over windows of size around 66,000bp on the genomes of Mus Musculus, Rhesus Macaque and Drososphilia Melanogaster. While the differences between these genomes are too great to expect that training on the human genome could predict, for example, the exact locations of genes, we demonstrate that our method gives reasonable estimates for the "coarse scale" problem of predicting CDS density. Inspired again by ergodic theory, the weightings of the nucleotide triplets obtained from our training procedure are used to define a probability distribution on finite sequences, which can be used to distinguish between intron and exon sequences from the human genome of lengths between 750bp and 5,000bp. At the end of the paper, we explain the theoretical underpinning for our approach, which is the theory of Thermodynamic Formalism from the dynamical systems literature. Mathematica and MATLAB implementations of our method are available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/topologicalpres/.

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arXiv2013

Intrinsic ergodicity via obstruction entropies

Bowen showed that a continuous expansive map with specification has a unique measure of maximal entropy. We show that the conclusion remains true under weaker non-uniform versions of these hypotheses. To this end, we introduce the notions of obstructions to expansivity and specification, and show that if the entropy of such obstructions is smaller than the topological entropy of the map, then there is a unique measure of maximal entropy.

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arXiv2012

Equilibrium states beyond specification and the Bowen property

It is well-known that for expansive maps and continuous potential functions, the specification property (for the map) and the Bowen property (for the potential) together imply the existence of a unique equilibrium state. We consider symbolic spaces that may not have specification, and potentials that may not have the Bowen property, and give conditions under which uniqueness of the equilibrium state can still be deduced. Our approach is to ask that the collection of cylinders which are obstructions to the specification property or the Bowen property is small in an appropriate quantitative sense. This allows us to construct an ergodic equilibrium state with a weak Gibbs property, which we then use to prove uniqueness. We do not use inducing schemes or the Perron--Frobenius operator, and we strengthen some previous results obtained using these approaches. In particular, we consider $β$-shifts and show that the class of potential functions with unique equilibrium states strictly contains the set of potentials with the Bowen property. We give applications to piecewise monotonic interval maps, including the family of geometric potentials for examples which have both indifferent fixed points and a non-Markov structure.

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arXiv2012

Irregular sets, the $β$-transformation and the almost specification property

Let $(X,d)$ be a compact metric space, $f:X \mapsto X$ be a continuous map satisfying a property we call almost specification (which is slightly weaker than the $g$-almost product property of Pfister and Sullivan), and $ϕ$ be a continuous function on $X$. We show that the set of points for which the Birkhoff average of $ϕ$ does not exist (which we call the irregular set) is either empty or has full topological entropy. Every $β$-shift satisfies almost specification and we show that the irregular set for any $β$-shift or $β$-transformation is either empty or has full topological entropy and Hausdorff dimension.

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