It has long been observed that multi-scale systems, particularly those in climatology, exhibit behavior typical of stochastic models, most notably in the unpredictability and statistical variability of events. This is often in spite of the fact that the underlying physical model is completely deterministic. One possible explanation for this stochastic behavior is deterministic chaotic effects. In fact, it has been well established that the statistical properties of chaotic systems can be well approximated by stochastic differential equations. In this talk, we focus on fast-slow ODEs, where the fast, chaotic variables are fed into the slow variables to yield a diffusion approximation. In particular we focus on the case where the chaotic noise is multidimensional and multiplicative. The tools from rough path theory prove useful in this difficult setting.[-]

A (pseudo)-Anosov flow on a 3-manifold can be understood through its orbit space, a bifoliated plane with a natural action of the fundamental group of the manifold. In this minicourse, we will describe techniques to study the dynamics of these orbit space actions as a means to understand the topological theory and the classification of (pseudo)Anosov flows in dimension 3. This leads to a more general theory of 'Anosov-like' actions on bifoliated planes, which form a rich class of discrete dynamical systems including but not limited to the orbit space actions from flows.[-]

Hyperbolic (Anosov or Axiom A) flows have discrete Ruelle spectrum. For contact Anosov flows, e.g. geodesic flows, where a smooth contact one form is preserved, the trapped set is a smooth symplectic manifold, normally hyperbolic, and M. Tsujii, S. Nonnenmacher and M. Zworski, have given an estimate for the asymptotic spectral gap, i.e. that appears in the limit of high frequencies in the flow direction. We will propose a different approach that may improve this estimate. This will be presented on a simple toy model, partially expanding maps. Work with Tobias Weich.[-]

​Consider the map $(x, z) \mapsto (x + \epsilon^{-\alpha} \sin (2\pi x) + \epsilon^{-(1+\alpha)}z, z + \epsilon \sin(2\pi x))$, which is conjugate to the Chirikov standard map with a large parameter. For suitable $\alpha$, we obtain a central limit theorem for the slow variable $z$ for a (Lebesgue) random initial condition. The result is proved by conjugating to the Chirikov standard map and utilizing the formalism of standard pairs. Our techniques also yield for the Chirikov standard map a related limit theorem and a ''finite-time'' decay of correlations result.
This is joint work with Alex Blumenthal and Ke Zhang.[-]

We present a convenient joint generalization of mixing and the local version of the central limit theorem (MLLT) for probability preserving dynamical systems. We verify that MLLT holds for several examples of hyperbolic systems by reviewing old results for maps and presenting new results for flows. Then we discuss applications such as proving various mixing properties of infinite measure preserving systems. Based on joint work with Dmitry Dolgopyat.[-]

In the 80's, D. Ruelle, D. Bowen and others have introduced probabilistic and spectral methods in order to study deterministic chaos (”Ruelle resonances”). For a geodesic flow on a strictly negative curvature Riemannian manifold, following this approach and use of microlocal analysis, one obtains that long time fluctuations of classical probabilities are described by an effective quantum wave equation. This may be surprising because there is no added quantization procedure. We will discuss consequences for the zeros of dynamical zeta functions. This shows that the problematic of classical chaos and quantum chaos are closely related. Joint work with Masato Tsujii.[-]