Ergodic theory is hard to study because it is based on measure theory, which is a technically difficult subject to master for ordinary students, especially for physics majors. Many of the examples are introduced from a different perspective than in other books and theoretical ideas can be gradually absorbed while doing computer experiments. Theoretically less prepared students can appreciate the deep theorems by doing various simulations. The computer experiments are simple but they have close ties with theoretical implications. Even the researchers in the field can benefit by checking their conjectures, which might have been regarded as unrealistic to be programmed easily, against numerical output using some of the ideas in the book. One last remark: The last chapter explains the relation between entropy and data compression, which belongs to information theory and not to ergodic theory. It will help students to gain an understanding of the digital technology that has shaped the modern information society.

This textbook is a self-contained and easy-to-read introduction to ergodic theory and the theory of dynamical systems, with a particular emphasis on chaotic dynamics. This book contains a broad selection of topics and explores the fundamental ideas of the subject. Starting with basic notions such as ergodicity, mixing, and isomorphisms of dynamical systems, the book then focuses on several chaotic transformations with hyperbolic dynamics, before moving on to topics such as entropy, information theory, ergodic decomposition and measurable partitions. Detailed explanations are accompanied by numerous examples, including interval maps, Bernoulli shifts, toral endomorphisms, geodesic flow on negatively curved manifolds, Morse-Smale systems, rational maps on the Riemann sphere and strange attractors. Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems will appeal to graduate students as well as researchers looking for an introduction to the subject. While gentle on the beginning student, the book also contains a number of comments for the more advanced reader.

The study of dynamical systems forms a vast and rapidly developing field even when one considers only activity whose methods derive mainly from measure theory and functional analysis. Karl Petersen has written a book which presents the fundamentals of the ergodic theory of point transformations and then several advanced topics which are currently undergoing intense research. By selecting one or more of these topics to focus on, the reader can quickly approach the specialized literature and indeed the frontier of the area of interest. Each of the four basic aspects of ergodic theory - examples, convergence theorems, recurrence properties, and entropy - receives first a basic and then a more advanced, particularized treatment. At the introductory level, the book provides clear and complete discussions of the standard examples, the mean and pointwise ergodic theorems, recurrence, ergodicity, weak mixing, strong mixing, and the fundamentals of entropy. Among the advanced topics are a thorough treatment of maximal functions and their usefulness in ergodic theory, analysis, and probability, an introduction to almost-periodic functions and topological dynamics, a proof of the Jewett-Krieger Theorem, an introduction to multiple recurrence and the Szemeredi-Furstenberg Theorem, and the Keane-Smorodinsky proof of Ornstein's Isomorphism Theorem for Bernoulli shifts. The author's easily-readable style combined with the profusion of exercises and references, summaries, historical remarks, and heuristic discussions make this book useful either as a text for graduate students or self-study, or as a reference work for the initiated.

This volume in the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, Second Edition, covers recent developments in classical areas of ergodic theory, including the asymptotic properties of measurable dynamical systems, spectral theory, entropy, ergodic theorems, joinings, isomorphism theory, recurrence, nonsingular systems. It enlightens connections of ergodic theory with symbolic dynamics, topological dynamics, smooth dynamics, combinatorics, number theory, pressure and equilibrium states, fractal geometry, chaos. In addition, the new edition includes dynamical systems of probabilistic origin, ergodic aspects of Sarnak's conjecture, translation flows on translation surfaces, complexity and classification of measurable systems, operator approach to asymptotic properties, interplay with operator algebras

Ergodic theory is one of the few branches of mathematics which has changed radically during the last two decades. Before this period, with a small number of exceptions, ergodic theory dealt primarily with averaging problems and general qualitative questions, while now it is a powerful amalgam of methods used for the analysis of statistical properties of dyna mical systems. For this reason, the problems of ergodic theory now interest not only the mathematician, but also the research worker in physics, biology, chemistry, etc. The outline of this book became clear to us nearly ten years ago but, for various reasons, its writing demanded a long period of time. The main principle, which we adhered to from the beginning, was to develop the approaches and methods or ergodic theory in the study of numerous concrete examples. Because of this, Part I of the book contains the description of various classes of dynamical systems, and their elementary analysis on the basis of the fundamental notions of ergodicity, mixing, and spectra of dynamical systems. Here, as in many other cases, the adjective" elementary" i~ not synonymous with "simple. " Part II is devoted to "abstract ergodic theory. " It includes the construc tion of direct and skew products of dynamical systems, the Rohlin-Halmos lemma, and the theory of special representations of dynamical systems with continuous time. A considerable part deals with entropy.

Rich with examples and applications, this textbook provides a coherent and self-contained introduction to ergodic theory, suitable for a variety of one- or two-semester courses. The authors' clear and fluent exposition helps the reader to grasp quickly the most important ideas of the theory, and their use of concrete examples illustrates these ideas and puts the results into perspective. The book requires few prerequisites, with background material supplied in the appendix. The first four chapters cover elementary material suitable for undergraduate students – invariance, recurrence and ergodicity – as well as some of the main examples. The authors then gradually build up to more sophisticated topics, including correlations, equivalent systems, entropy, the variational principle and thermodynamical formalism. The 400 exercises increase in difficulty through the text and test the reader's understanding of the whole theory. Hints and solutions are provided at the end of the book.

This concise classic by a well-known master of mathematical exposition covers recurrence, ergodic theorems, ergodicity and mixing properties, and the relation between conjugacy and equivalence. 1956 edition.

Ergodic Theory and Topological Dynamics

This informal introduction provides a fresh perspective on isomorphism theory, which is the branch of ergodic theory that explores the conditions under which two measure preserving systems are essentially equivalent. It contains a primer in basic measure theory, proofs of fundamental ergodic theorems, and material on entropy, martingales, Bernoulli processes, and various varieties of mixing. Original proofs of classic theorems - including the Shannon–McMillan–Breiman theorem, the Krieger finite generator theorem, and the Ornstein isomorphism theorem - are presented by degrees, together with helpful hints that encourage the reader to develop the proofs on their own. Hundreds of exercises and open problems are also included, making this an ideal text for graduate courses. Professionals needing a quick review, or seeking a different perspective on the subject, will also value this book.

Infinite ergodic theory is the study of measure preserving transformations of infinite measure spaces. The book focuses on properties specific to infinite measure preserving transformations. The work begins with an introduction to basic nonsingular ergodic theory, including recurrence behaviour, existence of invariant measures, ergodic theorems, and spectral theory. A wide range of possible "ergodic behaviour" is catalogued in the third chapter mainly according to the yardsticks of intrinsic normalizing constants, laws of large numbers, and return sequences. The rest of the book consists of illustrations of these phenomena, including Markov maps, inner functions, and cocycles and skew products. One chapter presents a start on the classification theory.