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Giovanni Forni

Publications and source records attributed to Giovanni Forni.

47 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2011

Limit Theorems for Horocycle Flows

The main results of this paper are limit theorems for horocycle flows on compact surfaces of constant negative curvature. One of the main objects of the paper is a special family of horocycle-invariant finitely-additive Hoelder measures on rectifiable arcs. An asymptotic formula for ergodic integrals for horocycle flows is obtained in terms of the finitely-additive measures, and limit theorems follow as a corollary of the asymptotic formula. The objects and results of this paper are similar to those in [15], [16], [4] and [5] for translation flows on flat surfaces. The arguments are based on the classification of invariant distributions for horocycle flows established in [12].

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arXiv2011

A geometric criterion for the non-uniform hyperbolicity of the Kontsevich--Zorich cocycle

We prove a geometric criterion on a $\SL$-invariant ergodic probability measure on the moduli space of holomorphic abelian differentials on Riemann surfaces for the non-uniform hyperbolicity of the Kontsevich--Zorich cocycle on the real Hodge bundle. Applications include measures supported on the $\SL$-orbits of all algebraically primitive Veech surfaces (see also \cite{Bouw:Moeller}) and of all Prym eigenforms discovered in \cite{McMullen2}, as well as all canonical absolutely continuous measures on connected components of strata of the moduli space of abelian differentials (see also \cite{Ftwo}, \cite{Avila:Viana}). The argument simplifies and generalizes our proof for the case of canonical measures \cite{Ftwo}. In an Appendix Carlos Matheus discusses several relevant examples which further illustrate the power and the limitations of our criterion.

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arXiv2010

Mixing for Time-Changes of Heisenberg Nilflows

We consider reparametrizations of Heisenberg nilflows. We show that if a Heisenberg nilflow is uniquely ergodic, all non-trivial time-changes within a dense subspace of smooth time-changes are mixing. Equivalently, in the language of special flows, we consider special flows over linear skew-shift extensions of irrational rotations of the circle. Without assuming any Diophantine condition on the frequency, we define a dense class of smooth roof functions for which the corresponding special flows are mixing. Mixing is produced by a mechanism known as stretching of Birkhoff sums. The complement of the set of mixing time-changes (or, equivalently, of mixing roof functions) has countable codimension and can be explicitely described in terms of the invariant distributions for the nilflow (or, equivalently, for the skew-shift), allowing to produce concrete examples of mixing time-changes.

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arXiv2007

Sobolev regularity of solutions of the cohomological equation

We refine the theory of the cohomological equation for translation flows on higher genus surfaces with the goal of proving optimal results on the Sobolev regularity of solutions and of distributional obstructions. For typical translation surfaces our results are sharp and we find the expected relation between the regularity of the distributional obstructions and the Lyapunov exponents of the Kontsevich-Zorich renormalization cocycle. As a consequence we exactly determine the dimension of the space of obstructions in each Sobolev regularity class in terms of the Kontsevich-Zorich exponents. For a fixed arbitrary translation surface and a typical direction, our results are probably not optimal but are the best which can be achieved with the available harmonic analysis techniques we have introduced in an earlier paper.

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arXiv2007

On the Greenfield-Wallach and Katok conjectures

We survey recent progress on the Greenfield-Wallach and Katok conjectures on globally hypoelliptic and cohomology free vector fields and derive a proof of the conjectures in dimension three. The argument is primarily based on recent work of F. and J. Rodriguez Hertz which allows us to reduce the question to the case of a Reeb flow for a contact form. The contact case is settled by invoking the Weinstein conjecture (which has been recently announced by C. Taubes).

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arXiv2005

On the cohomological equation for nilflows

Let X be a vector field on a compact connected manifold M. An important question in dynamical systems is to know when a function g:M -> R is a coboundary for the flow generated by X, i.e. when there exists a function f: M->R such that Xf=g. In this article we investigate this question for nilflows on nilmanifolds. We show that there exists countably many independent Schwartz distributions D_n such that any sufficiently smooth function g is a coboundary iff it belongs to the kernel of all the distributions D_n.

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arXiv2004

Deviation of ergodic averages for area-preserving flows on surfaces of higher genus

We prove a substantial part of a conjecture of Kontsevich and Zorich on the Lyapunov exponents of the Teichmuller geodesic flow on the deviation of ergodic averages for generic conservative flows on higher genus surfaces. The result on the Teichmuller flow is formulated in terms of a (symplectic) cocycle on the real cohomology bundle over the moduli space of holomorphic differentials introduced by Kontsevich and Zorich. We prove that such a cocycle is non-uniformly hyperbolic, that is, all of its Lyapunov exponents are different from zero. In particular, the number of strictly positive exponents is equal to the genus of the surface. From this theorem we derive that ergodic integrals of smooth functions for generic area-preserving flows on higher genus surfaces grow with time according to a power-law asymptotics with a number of terms equal to the genus of the surface and stricltly positive exponents equal to the non-negative Lyapunov exponents of the Kontsevich-Zorich cocycle. In particular, for conservative flows on surfaces of higher genus, the deviation of ergodic averages for a generic smooth function obeys a power law with a strictly positive exponent and, consequently, the Denjoy-Koksma inequality does not hold. The derivation of the deviation theorem relies in a fundamental way on the notion of invariant distribution for flows on surfaces and the related notion of basic current for the orbit foliation.

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arXiv2003

Asymptotic behaviour of ergodic integrals of `renormalizable' parabolic flows

Ten years ago A. Zorich discovered, by computer experiments on interval exchange transformations, some striking new power laws for the ergodic integrals of generic non-exact Hamiltonian flows on higher genus surfaces. In Zorich's later work and in a joint paper authored by M. Kontsevich, Zorich and Kontsevich were able to explain conjecturally most of Zorich's discoveries by relating them to the ergodic theory of Teichmüller flows on moduli spaces of Abelian differentials. In this article, we outline a generalization of the Kontsevich-Zorich framework to a class of `renormalizable' flows on `pseudo-homogeneous' spaces. We construct for such flows a `renormalization dynamics' on an appropriate `moduli space', which generalizes the Teichmüller flow. If a flow is renormalizable and the space of smooth functions is `stable', in the sense that the Lie derivative operator on smooth functions has closed range, the behaviour of ergodic integrals can be analyzed, at least in principle, in terms of an Oseledec's decomposition for a `renormalization cocycle' over the bundle of `basic currents' for the orbit foliation of the flow. This approach was suggested by the author's proof of the Kontsevich-Zorich conjectures and it has since been applied, in collaboration with L. Flaminio, to prove that the Zorich phenomenon generalizes to several classical examples of volume preserving, uniquely ergodic, parabolic flows such as horocycle flows and nilpotent flows on homogeneous 3-manifolds.

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