A large international conference celebrated the 50-year career of Anatole Katok and the body of research across smooth dynamics and ergodic theory that he touched. In this book many leading experts provide an account of the latest developments at the research frontier and together set an agenda for future work, including an explicit problem list. This includes elliptic, parabolic, and hyperbolic smooth dynamics, ergodic theory, smooth ergodic theory, and actions of higher-rank groups. The chapters are written in a readable style and give a broad view of each topic; they blend the most current results with the developments leading up to them, and give a perspective on future work. This book is ideal for graduate students, instructors and researchers across all research areas in dynamical systems and related subjects.

Designed to work as a reference and as a supplement to an advanced course on dynamical systems, this book presents a self-contained and comprehensive account of modern smooth ergodic theory. Among other things, this provides a rigorous mathematical foundation for the phenomenon known as deterministic chaos - the appearance of 'chaotic' motions in pure deterministic dynamical systems. A sufficiently complete description of topological and ergodic properties of systems exhibiting deterministic chaos can be deduced from relatively weak requirements on their local behavior known as nonuniform hyperbolicity conditions. Nonuniform hyperbolicity theory is an important part of the general theory of dynamical systems. Its core is the study of dynamical systems with nonzero Lyapunov exponents both conservative and dissipative, in addition to cocycles and group actions. The results of this theory are widely used in geometry (e.g., geodesic flows and Teichmuller flows), in rigidity theory, in the study of some partial differential equations (e.g., the Schroedinger equation), in the theory of billiards, as well as in applications to physics, biology, engineering, and other fields.

This volume presents a wide cross section of current research in the theory of dynamical systems and contains articles by leading researchers, including several Fields medalists, in a variety of specialties. These are surveys, usually with new results included, as well as research papers that are included because of their potentially high impact. Major areas covered include hyperbolic dynamics, elliptic dynamics, mechanics, geometry, ergodic theory, group actions, rigidity, applications. The target audience includes dynamicists, who will find new results in their own specialty as well as surveys in others, and mathematicians from other disciplines who look for a sample of current developments in ergodic theory and dynamical systems.