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

This text is a rigorous introduction to ergodic theory, developing the machinery of conditional measures and expectations, mixing, and recurrence. Beginning by developing the basics of ergodic theory and progressing to describe some recent applications to number theory, this book goes beyond the standard texts in this topic. Applications include Weyl's polynomial equidistribution theorem, the ergodic proof of Szemeredi's theorem, the connection between the continued fraction map and the modular surface, and a proof of the equidistribution of horocycle orbits. Ergodic Theory with a view towards Number Theory will appeal to mathematicians with some standard background in measure theory and functional analysis. No background in ergodic theory or Lie theory is assumed, and a number of exercises and hints to problems are included, making this the perfect companion for graduate students and researchers in ergodic theory, homogenous dynamics or number theory.

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.

This book offers an introduction to a classical problem in ergodic theory and smooth dynamics, namely, the Kolmogorov–Bernoulli (non)equivalence problem, and presents recent results in this field. Starting with a crash course on ergodic theory, it uses the class of ergodic automorphisms of the two tori as a toy model to explain the main ideas and technicalities arising in the aforementioned problem. The level of generality then increases step by step, extending the results to the class of uniformly hyperbolic diffeomorphisms, and concludes with a survey of more recent results in the area concerning, for example, the class of partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms. It is hoped that with this type of presentation, nonspecialists and young researchers in dynamical systems may be encouraged to pursue problems in this area.

This volume contains the proceedings of the Conference on Dynamical Systems, Ergodic Theory, and Probability, which was dedicated to the memory of Nikolai Chernov, held from May 18–20, 2015, at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama. The book is devoted to recent advances in the theory of chaotic and weakly chaotic dynamical systems and its applications to statistical mechanics. The papers present new original results as well as comprehensive surveys.

This volume provides a philosophical appraisal of probabilities in all of physics. It makes sense of probabilistic statements as they occur in the various physical theories and models and presents a plausible epistemology and metaphysics of probabilities.