Étant donnée une fonction régulière de moyenne nulle sur le tore de dimension $2$, il est facile de voir que ses intégrales ergodiques au-dessus d’un flot de translation “générique”sont bornées. Il y a une dizaine d’années, A. Zorich a observé numériquement une croissance en puissance du temps de ces intégrales ergodiques au-dessus de flots d’hamiltoniens (non-exacts) “génériques”sur des surfaces de genre supérieur ou égal à $2$, et Kontsevich et Zorich ont proposé une explication (conjecturelle) de...

The evolution of n–dimensional graphs under a weighted curvature flow is approximated by linear finite elements. We obtain optimal error bounds for the normals and the normal velocities of the surfaces in natural norms. Furthermore we prove a global existence result for the continuous problem and present some examples of computed surfaces.

We introduce a new equivalence relation on the set of all polygonal billiards. We say that two billiards (or polygons) are order equivalent if each of the billiards has an orbit whose footpoints are dense in the boundary and the two sequences of footpoints of these orbits have the same combinatorial order. We study this equivalence relation under additional regularity conditions on the orbit.

We show that an aperiodic minimal tiling space with only finitely many asymptotic composants embeds in a surface if and only if it is the suspension of a symbolic interval exchange transformation (possibly with reversals). We give two necessary conditions for an aperiodic primitive substitution tiling space to embed in a surface. In the case of substitutions on two symbols our classification is nearly complete. The results characterize the codimension one hyperbolic attractors of surface diffeomorphisms...

Un homéomorphisme de Brouwer est un homéomorphisme du plan, sans point fixe, préservant l’orientation. Le théorème des translations planes affirme qu’un tel homéomorphisme s’obtient toujours en « recollant des translations ». Dans cet article, nous introduisons un nouvel invariant de conjugaison des homéomorphismes de Brouwer, l’ensemble oscillant, pour tenter de décrire assez précisément la manière dont s’effectue le recollement des translations. D’une part, nous utilisons la notion d’ensemble...

We describe necessary and sufficient conditions for a fixed point free planar homeomorphism that preserves the standard Reeb foliation to embed in a planar flow that leaves the foliation invariant.

Let F be a homeomorphism of 𝕋² = ℝ²/ℤ² isotopic to the identity and f a lift to the universal covering space ℝ². We suppose that κ ∈ H¹(𝕋²,ℝ) is a cohomology class which is positive on the rotation set of f. We prove the existence of a smooth Lyapunov function of f whose derivative lifts a non-vanishing smooth closed form on 𝕋² whose cohomology class is κ.

Special flows over some locally rigid automorphisms and under L² ceiling functions satisfying a local L² Denjoy-Koksma type inequality are considered. Such flows are proved to be disjoint (in the sense of Furstenberg) from mixing flows and (under some stronger assumption) from weakly mixing flows for which the weak closure of the set of all instances consists of indecomposable Markov operators. As applications we prove that ∙ special flows built over ergodic interval exchange...

We give a positive answer to the problem of existence of smooth weakly mixing but not mixing flows on some surfaces. More precisely, on each compact connected surface whose Euler characteristic is even and negative we construct smooth weakly mixing flows which are disjoint in the sense of Furstenberg from all mixing flows and from all Gaussian flows.

A planar polygonal billiard $𝒫$ is said to have the finite blocking property if for every pair $(O,A)$ of points in $𝒫$ there exists a finite number of “blocking” points $B_1,\cdots ,B_n$ such that every billiard trajectory from $O$ to $A$ meets one of the $B_i$’s. Generalizing our construction of a counter-example to a theorem of Hiemer and Snurnikov, we show that the only regular polygons that have the finite blocking property are the square, the equilateral triangle and the hexagon. Then we extend this result to translation surfaces....

Kočergin introduced in 1975 a class of smooth flows on the two torus that are mixing. When these flows have one fixed point, they can be viewed as special flows over an irrational rotation of the circle, with a ceiling function having a power-like singularity. Under a Diophantine condition on the rotation’s angle, we prove that the special flows actually have a $t^{-\eta }$-speed of mixing, for some $\eta \>0$.

Soit $f$ un homéomorphisme du plan qui préserve l’orientation et qui a un point périodique $z^{*}$ de période $q\ge 2$. Nous montrons qu’il existe un point fixe $z$ tel que le nombre d’enlacement de $z^{*}$ et $z$ ne soit pas nul. En d’autres termes, le nombre de rotation de l’orbite de $z^{*}$ dans l’anneau ${ℝ}^2\setminus \left\{z\right\}$ est un élément non nul de $ℝ/\mathbb{Z}$. Ceci donne une réponse positive à une question posée par John Franks.

We consider special flows over the rotation on the circle by an irrational α under roof functions of bounded variation. The roof functions, in the Lebesgue decomposition, are assumed to have a continuous singular part coming from a quasi-similar Cantor set (including the devil's staircase case). Moreover, a finite number of discontinuities is allowed. Assuming that α has bounded partial quotients, we prove that all such flows are weakly mixing and enjoy the weak Ratner property. Moreover, we provide...

Given an unknown attractor 𝓐 in a continuous dynamical system, how can we discover the topology and dynamics of 𝓐? As a practical matter, how can we do so from only a finite amount of information? One way of doing so is to produce a semi-conjugacy from 𝓐 onto a model system 𝓜 whose topology and dynamics are known. The complexity of 𝓜 then provides a lower bound for the complexity of 𝓐. The Conley index can be used to construct a simplicial model and a surjective semi-conjugacy for a large...

We give a very brief, but gentle, sketch of an introduction both to the Rosen continued fractions and to a geometric setting to which they are related, given in terms of Veech groups. We have kept the informal approach of the talk at the Numerations conference, aimed at an audience assumed to have heard of neither of the topics of the title.The Rosen continued fractions are a family of continued fraction algorithms, each gives expansions of real numbers in terms of elements of a corresponding algebraic...