An Introduction to Infinite Ergodic Theory

Book excerpt: Infinite ergodic theory is the study of measure preserving transformations of infinite measure spaces. The book focuses on properties specific to infinite measure preserving transformations. The work begins with an introduction to basic nonsingular ergodic theory, including recurrence behaviour, existence of invariant measures, ergodic theorems, and spectral theory. A wide range of possible "ergodic behaviour" is catalogued in the third chapter mainly according to the yardsticks of intrinsic normalizing constants, laws of large numbers, and return sequences. The rest of the book consists of illustrations of these phenomena, including Markov maps, inner functions, and cocycles and skew products. One chapter presents a start on the classification theory.