0000000000149631
AUTHOR
Dominique Malicet
Entropy, Lyapunov exponents, and rigidity of group actions
This text is an expanded series of lecture notes based on a 5-hour course given at the workshop entitled "Workshop for young researchers: Groups acting on manifolds" held in Teres\'opolis, Brazil in June 2016. The course introduced a number of classical tools in smooth ergodic theory -- particularly Lyapunov exponents and metric entropy -- as tools to study rigidity properties of group actions on manifolds. We do not present comprehensive treatment of group actions or general rigidity programs. Rather, we focus on two rigidity results in higher-rank dynamics: the measure rigidity theorem for affine Anosov abelian actions on tori due to A. Katok and R. Spatzier [Ergodic Theory Dynam. Systems…
Ping-pong configurations and circular orders on free groups
We discuss actions of free groups on the circle with "ping-pong" dynamics; these are dynamics determined by a finite amount of combinatorial data, analogous to Schottky domains or Markov partitions. Using this, we show that the free group $F_n$ admits an isolated circular order if and only if n is even, in stark contrast with the case for linear orders. This answers a question from (Mann, Rivas, 2016). Inspired by work of Alvarez, Barrientos, Filimonov, Kleptsyn, Malicet, Menino and Triestino, we also exhibit examples of "exotic" isolated points in the space of all circular orders on $F_2$. Analogous results are obtained for linear orders on the groups $F_n \times \mathbb{Z}$.