In
mathematics, more particularly in the fields of
dynamical systems
In mathematics, a dynamical system is a system in which a function describes the time dependence of a point in an ambient space. Examples include the mathematical models that describe the swinging of a clock pendulum, the flow of water in ...
and
geometric topology
In mathematics, geometric topology is the study of manifolds and maps between them, particularly embeddings of one manifold into another.
History
Geometric topology as an area distinct from algebraic topology may be said to have originat ...
, an Anosov map on a
manifold
In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point. More precisely, an n-dimensional manifold, or ''n-manifold'' for short, is a topological space with the property that each point has a ...
''M'' is a certain type of mapping, from ''M'' to itself, with rather clearly marked local directions of "expansion" and "contraction". Anosov systems are a special case of
Axiom A
In mathematics, Smale's axiom A defines a class of dynamical systems which have been extensively studied and whose dynamics is relatively well understood. A prominent example is the Smale horseshoe map. The term "axiom A" originates with Stephen S ...
systems.
Anosov diffeomorphisms were introduced by
Dmitri Victorovich Anosov, who proved that their behaviour was in an appropriate sense ''generic'' (when they exist at all).
[ Dmitri V. Anosov, ''Geodesic flows on closed Riemannian manifolds with negative curvature'', (1967) Proc. Steklov Inst. Mathematics. 90.]
Overview
Three closely related definitions must be distinguished:
* If a differentiable
map ''f'' on ''M'' has a
hyperbolic structure on the
tangent bundle
In differential geometry, the tangent bundle of a differentiable manifold M is a manifold TM which assembles all the tangent vectors in M . As a set, it is given by the disjoint unionThe disjoint union ensures that for any two points and ...
, then it is called an Anosov map. Examples include the
Bernoulli map
The dyadic transformation (also known as the dyadic map, bit shift map, 2''x'' mod 1 map, Bernoulli map, doubling map or sawtooth map) is the mapping (i.e., recurrence relation)
: T: , 1) \to , and
, 1)^\infty
: x \mapsto (x_0, x_1, x_2, ...
, and Arnold's cat map.
* If the map is a diffeomorphism, then it is called an Anosov diffeomorphism.
* If a flow (mathematics)">flow