The purpose of thermodynamics and statistical physics is to understand the equilibrium of a gas or the different states of matter. To understand the strange fractal sets appearing when one iterates a quadratic polynomial is one of the goals of the theory of holomorphic dynamical systems. These two theories are strongly linked: The laws of thermodynamics happen to be an extremely powerful tool for understanding the objects of holomorphic dynamical systems. A "thermodynamic formalism" has been developed, bringing together notions that are a priori unrelated. While the deep reasons of this parallelism remain unknown, the goal of this book is to describe this formalism both from the physical and mathematical point of view in order to understand how it works and how useful it can be. This translation is a slightly revised version of the original French edition. The main changes are in Chapters 5 and 6 and consist of clarification of some proofs and a new presentation of the basics in iteration of polynomials.

The book contains a detailed treatment of thermodynamic formalism on general compact metrizable spaces. Topological pressure, topological entropy, variational principle, and equilibrium states are presented in detail. Abstract ergodic theory is also given a significant attention. Ergodic theorems, ergodicity, and Kolmogorov-Sinai metric entropy are fully explored. Furthermore, the book gives the reader an opportunity to find rigorous presentation of thermodynamic formalism for distance expanding maps and, in particular, subshifts of finite type over a finite alphabet. It also provides a fairly complete treatment of subshifts of finite type over a countable alphabet. Transfer operators, Gibbs states and equilibrium states are, in this context, introduced and dealt with. Their relations are explored. All of this is applied to fractal geometry centered around various versions of Bowen’s formula in the context of expanding conformal repellors, limit sets of conformal iterated function systems and conformal graph directed Markov systems. A unique introduction to iteration of rational functions is given with emphasize on various phenomena caused by rationally indifferent periodic points. Also, a fairly full account of the classicaltheory of Shub’s expanding endomorphisms is given; it does not have a book presentation in English language mathematical literature.

The book contains a detailed treatment of thermodynamic formalism on general compact metrizable spaces. Topological pressure, topological entropy, variational principle, and equilibrium states are presented in detail. Abstract ergodic theory is also given a significant attention. Ergodic theorems, ergodicity, and Kolmogorov-Sinai metric entropy are fully explored. Furthermore, the book gives the reader an opportunity to find rigorous presentation of thermodynamic formalism for distance expanding maps and, in particular, subshifts of finite type over a finite alphabet. It also provides a fairly complete treatment of subshifts of finite type over a countable alphabet. Transfer operators, Gibbs states and equilibrium states are, in this context, introduced and dealt with. Their relations are explored. All of this is applied to fractal geometry centered around various versions of Bowen’s formula in the context of expanding conformal repellors, limit sets of conformal iterated function systems and conformal graph directed Markov systems. A unique introduction to iteration of rational functions is given with emphasize on various phenomena caused by rationally indifferent periodic points. Also, a fairly full account of the classicaltheory of Shub’s expanding endomorphisms is given; it does not have a book presentation in English language mathematical literature.

This volume arose from a semester at CIRM-Luminy on “Thermodynamic Formalism: Applications to Probability, Geometry and Fractals” which brought together leading experts in the area to discuss topical problems and recent progress. It includes a number of surveys intended to make the field more accessible to younger mathematicians and scientists wishing to learn more about the area. Thermodynamic formalism has been a powerful tool in ergodic theory and dynamical system and its applications to other topics, particularly Riemannian geometry (especially in negative curvature), statistical properties of dynamical systems and fractal geometry. This work will be of value both to graduate students and more senior researchers interested in either learning about the main ideas and themes in thermodynamic formalism, and research themes which are at forefront of research in this area.

The focus of this book is on open conformal dynamical systems corresponding to the escape of a point through an open Euclidean ball. The ultimate goal is to understand the asymptotic behavior of the escape rate as the radius of the ball tends to zero. In the case of hyperbolic conformal systems this has been addressed by various authors. The conformal maps considered in this book are far more general, and the analysis correspondingly more involved. The asymptotic existence of escape rates is proved and they are calculated in the context of (finite or infinite) countable alphabets, uniformly contracting conformal graph-directed Markov systems, and in particular, conformal countable alphabet iterated function systems. These results have direct applications to interval maps, rational functions and meromorphic maps. Towards this goal the authors develop, on a purely symbolic level, a theory of singular perturbations of Perron--Frobenius (transfer) operators associated with countable alphabet subshifts of finite type and Hölder continuous summable potentials. This leads to a fairly full account of the structure of the corresponding open dynamical systems and their associated surviving sets.

This volume in the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, Second Edition, covers recent developments in classical areas of ergodic theory, including the asymptotic properties of measurable dynamical systems, spectral theory, entropy, ergodic theorems, joinings, isomorphism theory, recurrence, nonsingular systems. It enlightens connections of ergodic theory with symbolic dynamics, topological dynamics, smooth dynamics, combinatorics, number theory, pressure and equilibrium states, fractal geometry, chaos. In addition, the new edition includes dynamical systems of probabilistic origin, ergodic aspects of Sarnak's conjecture, translation flows on translation surfaces, complexity and classification of measurable systems, operator approach to asymptotic properties, interplay with operator algebras