Typical Dynamics of Volume Preserving Homeomorphisms

Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics #139

by Steve Alpern, V.S. Prasad

This book provides a self-contained introduction to typical properties of volume preserving homeomorphisms, examples of which include transitivity, chaos and ergodicity. A key notion is the interrelation between typical properties of volume preserving homeomorphisms and typical properties of volume preserving bijections of the underlying measure space. The authors make the first part of the book very concrete by focusing on volume preserving homeomorphisms of the unit n-dimensional cube. They also prove fixed point theorems (Conley-Zehnder-Franks). This is done in a number of short self-contained chapters which would be suitable for an undergraduate analysis seminar or a graduate lecture course. Parts II and III consider compact manifolds and sigma compact manifolds respectively. Much of this work describes the work of the two authors in extending to different settings and properties, the celebrated result of Oxtoby and Ulam that for volume homeomorphisms of the unit cube, ergodicity is a typical property.

238 pages, ebook

First published March 28, 1997