We consider a large class of 2D area-preserving diffeomorphisms that are not uniformly hyperbolic but have strong hyperbolicity properties on large regions of their phase spaces. A prime example is the standard map. Lower bounds for Lyapunov exponents of such systems are very hard to estimate, due to the potential switching of “stable” and “unstable” directions. This paper shows that with the addition of (very) small random perturbations, one obtains with relative ease Lyapunov exponents reflecting the geometry of the deterministic maps.

The main goal of this paper is to understand finer properties of the effective burning velocity from a combustion model introduced by Majda and Souganidis. Motivated by results of Bangert and applications in turbulent combus- tion, we show that when the dimension is two and the flow of the ambient fluid is either weak or very strong, the level set of the effective burning velocity has flat pieces. Due to the lack of an applicable Hopf-type rigidity result, we need to identify the exact location of at least one flat piece. Implications on the effective flame front and other related inverse type problems are also discussed.

We consider densities $D_\Sigma(A)$, $\overline{D}_\Sigma(A)$ and $\underline{D}_\Sigma(A)$ for a subset $A$ of $\mathbb{N}$ with respect to a sequence $\Sigma$ of finite subsets of $\mathbb{N}$ and study Fourier coefficients of ergodic, weakly mixing and strongly mixing $\times p$-invariant measures on the unit circle $\mathbb{T}$. Combining these, we prove the following measure rigidity results: on $\mathbb{T}$, the Lebesgue measure is the only non-atomic $\times p$-invariant measure satisfying one of the following: (1) $\mu$ is ergodic and there exist a F\o lner sequence $\Sigma$ in $\mathbb{N}$ and a nonzero integer $l$ such that $\mu$ is $\times (p^j+l)$-invariant for all $j$ in a subset $A$ of $\mathbb{N}$ with $D_\Sigma(A)=1$; (2) $\mu$ is weakly mixing and there exist a F\o lner sequence $\Sigma$ in $\mathbb{N}$ and a nonzero integer $l$ such that $\mu$ is $\times (p^j+l)$-invariant for all $j$ in a subset $A$ of $\mathbb{N}$ with $\overline{D}_\Sigma(A)>0$; (3) $\mu$ is strongly mixing and there exists a nonzero integer $l$ such that $\mu$ is $\times (p^j+l)$-invariant for infinitely many $j$. Moreover, a $\times p$-invariant measure satisfying (2) or (3) is either a Dirac measure or the Lebesgue measure. As an application we prove that for every increasing function $\tau$ defined on positive integers with $\lim_{n\to\infty}\tau(n)=\infty$, there exists a multiplicative semigroup $S_\tau$ of $\mathbb{Z}^+$ containing $p$ such that $|S_\tau\cap[1,n]|\leq (\log_p n)^{\tau(n)}$ and the Lebesgue measure is the only non-atomic ergodic $\times p$-invariant measure which is $\times q$-invariant for all $q$ in $S_\tau$.

We give an example of a dominant rational self-map of the projective plane whose dynamical degree is a transcendental number.

We will prove Sarnak’s conjecture on Möbius disjointness for continuous interval maps of zero entropy and also for orientation-preserving circle homeomorphisms by reducing these result to a well-known theorem of Davenport from 1937.