Hyperbolicity and Rigidity for Fibred Partially Hyperbolic Systems

Abstract: Every volume-preserving centre-bunched fibred partially hyperbolic system with 2-dimensional centre either (1) has two distinct centre Lyapunov exponents, or (2) exhibits an invariant continuous line field (or pair of line fields) tangent to the centre leaves, or (3) admits a continuous conformal structure on the centre leaves invariant under both the dynamics and the stable and unstable holonomies. The last two alternatives carry strong restrictions on the topology of the centre leaves: (2) can only occur on tori, and for (3) the centre leaves must be either tori or spheres. Moreover, under some additional conditions, such maps are rigid, in the sense that they are topologically conjugate to specific algebraic models. When the system is symplectic (1) implies that the centre Lyapunov exponents are non-zero, and thus the system is (non-uniformly) hyperbolic.