A First Course in Ergodic Theory provides readers with an introductory course in Ergodic Theory. This textbook has been developed from the authors’ own notes on the subject, which they have been teaching since the 1990s. Over the years they have added topics, theorems, examples and explanations from various sources. The result is a book that is easy to teach from and easy to learn from — designed to require only minimal prerequisites. Features Suitable for readers with only a basic knowledge of measure theory, some topology and a very basic knowledge of functional analysis Perfect as the primary textbook for a course in Ergodic Theory Examples are described and are studied in detail when new properties are presented.

The first part of this introduction to ergodic theory addresses measure-preserving transformations of probability spaces and covers such topics as recurrence properties and the Birkhoff ergodic theorem. The second part focuses on the ergodic theory of continuous transformations of compact metrizable spaces. Several examples are detailed, and the final chapter outlines results and applications of ergodic theory to other branches of mathematics.

Ergodic Theory of Numbers looks at the interaction between two fields of mathematics: number theory and ergodic theory (as part of dynamical systems). It is an introduction to the ergodic theory behind common number expansions, like decimal expansions, continued fractions, and many others. However, its aim does not stop there. For undergraduate students with sufficient background knowledge in real analysis and graduate students interested in the area, it is also an introduction to a "dynamical way of thinking". The questions studied here are dynamical as well as number theoretical in nature, and the answers are obtained with the help of ergodic theory. Attention is focused on concepts like measure-preserving, ergodicity, natural extension, induced transformations, and entropy. These concepts are then applied to familiar expansions to obtain old and new results in an elegant and straightforward manner. What it means to be ergodic and the basic ideas behind ergodic theory will be explained along the way. The subjects covered vary from classical to recent, which makes this book appealing to researchers as well as students.

This concise classic by Paul R. Halmos, a well-known master of mathematical exposition, has served as a basic introduction to aspects of ergodic theory since its first publication in 1956. "The book is written in the pleasant, relaxed, and clear style usually associated with the author," noted the Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, adding, "The material is organized very well and painlessly presented." Suitable for advanced undergraduates and graduate students in mathematics, the treatment covers recurrence, mean and pointwise convergence, ergodic theorem, measure algebras, and automorphisms of compact groups. Additional topics include weak topology and approximation, uniform topology and approximation, invariant measures, unsolved problems, and other subjects.

Ergodic theory is hard to study because it is based on measure theory, which is a technically difficult subject to master for ordinary students, especially for physics majors. Many of the examples are introduced from a different perspective than in other books and theoretical ideas can be gradually absorbed while doing computer experiments. Theoretically less prepared students can appreciate the deep theorems by doing various simulations. The computer experiments are simple but they have close ties with theoretical implications. Even the researchers in the field can benefit by checking their conjectures, which might have been regarded as unrealistic to be programmed easily, against numerical output using some of the ideas in the book. One last remark: The last chapter explains the relation between entropy and data compression, which belongs to information theory and not to ergodic theory. It will help students to gain an understanding of the digital technology that has shaped the modern information society.

Rich with examples and applications, this textbook provides a coherent and self-contained introduction to ergodic theory, suitable for a variety of one- or two-semester courses. The authors' clear and fluent exposition helps the reader to grasp quickly the most important ideas of the theory, and their use of concrete examples illustrates these ideas and puts the results into perspective. The book requires few prerequisites, with background material supplied in the appendix. The first four chapters cover elementary material suitable for undergraduate students – invariance, recurrence and ergodicity – as well as some of the main examples. The authors then gradually build up to more sophisticated topics, including correlations, equivalent systems, entropy, the variational principle and thermodynamical formalism. The 400 exercises increase in difficulty through the text and test the reader's understanding of the whole theory. Hints and solutions are provided at the end of the book.

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.