Symbolic dynamics and Markov partitions

Abstract

The decimal expansion of real numbers, familiar to us all, has a dramatic generalization to representation of dynamical system orbits by symbolic sequences. The natural way to associate a symbolic sequence with an orbit is to track its history through a partition. But in order to get a useful symbolism, one needs to construct a partition with special properties. In this work we develop a general theory of representing dynamical systems by symbolic systems by means of so-called Markov partitions. We apply the results to one of the more tractable examples: namely, hyperbolic automorphisms of the two dimensional torus. While there are some results in higher dimensions, this area remains a fertile one for research.