[550.4.1]Let be the phase or state space of a dynamical system,
let
be a
-algebra of measurable subsets of
,
and
a measure
on
such that
.[550.4.2]The triple
forms a
probability measure space.[550.4.3]In general the time evolution of the
system is given as a flow (or semiflow) on
,
defined as a one-parameter family of maps
such that
is the identity,
for all
and such that for every measurable function
the function
is measurable on the direct product
.[550.4.4]For every
also
holds.[550.4.5]The measure
is called invariant under the flow
if
for all
.[550.4.6]An invariant measure is called ergodic if it cannot
be decomposed into a convex combination of invariant measures,
i.e. if
with
invariant and
implies
or
.
[550.5.1]The flow defines the time evolution of measures through
as a map
on the space
of measures on
.[550.5.2]Defining as usual
[22, 23]
shows that
![]() |
(1) |
and thus the flow acts on measures as a right translation in time.[550.5.3]The existence of the inverse
for a flow
expresses microscopic reversibility.[550.5.4]The infinitesimal
[page 551, §0] generator
of
is defined (assuming all the
necessary structure for
and
) as the strong limit
![]() |
(2) |
where denotes the identity, and one has
for right translations.[551.0.1]The invariance of
the measure
can be expressed as
and
it implies that for given
![]() |
(3) |
for all .
[551.1.1]The continuous time evolution with
may be discretized
into the discrete time evolution
with
generated by the
map
with discretization time step
.[551.1.2]Consider an
arbitrary subset
corresponding to a physically
interesting reduced or coarse grained description of the original
dynamical system.[551.1.3]Not all choices of
correspond to a physically
interesting situation, and the choice of
reflects physical
modeling or insight.[551.1.4]A point
is called recurrent with
respect to
if there exists a
for which
.[551.1.5]The Poincarè recurrence theorem asserts that if
is
invariant under
and
then almost every point
of
is recurrent with respect to
.[551.1.6]A set
is called a
-recurrent set if
-almost every
is recurrent with respect to
.[551.1.7]By virtue of Poincarè’s recurrence theorem the transformation
defines an induced transformation
on subsets
of positive measure,
, through
![]() |
(4) |
for almost every .[551.1.8]The recurrence time
of
the point
, defined as
![]() |
(5) |
is positive and finite for almost every point .[551.1.9]Because
has positive measure it becomes a probability
measure space with the induced measure
.[551.1.10]If
was invariant under
then
is invariant under
,
and ergodicity of
implies ergodicity also for
[22].
[551.2.1]The induced transformation exists for
-almost every
with
by virtue of the
Poincare recurrence theorem.[551.2.2]To extend the definition to the
case
let
denote a subspace
of
measure
with
-algebra
contained in
,
, in the sense that
for all
.[551.2.3]
for all
while
for
all sets
with
.[551.2.4]Let
.[551.2.5]If
is
-recurrent under
in the sense that
-almost
every point (rather than
) is recurrent with respect to
then the recurrence time
and the map
are
defined for
-almost every point
.[551.2.6]Throughout the following it will be assumed that
is
-recurrent under
, and that
.[551.2.7]An example is given by solidification
where
represents the high temperature phase space,
while
corresponds to the phase space at low temperatures
when a large number of nuclear translational degrees of freedom
is frozen out.
[551.3.1]The pointwise definition of can be extended to a
transformation on measures by averaging over the recurrence times.[551.3.2]This extension was first given in [21].[551.3.3]Let
![]() |
(6) |
be the set of points whose recurrence time is .[551.3.4]The number
![]() |
(7) |
[page 552, §0] is the probability to find a recurrence time with
.[552.0.1]The numbers
define a discrete (lattice) probability density
concentrated on the arithmetic progression
.[552.0.2]The induced transformation
acting on a measure
on
is defined as the mathematical expectation
![]() |
(8) |
where , and
was given in (1).[552.0.3]This defines a transformation
on the space
of measures on
.[552.0.4]The next section discusses the
iterated transformation
and the long time limit
.