An estimate for the entropy of Hamiltonian flows

Francesca C. Chittaro

Published 2006-02-28Version 1

In the paper we present a generalization to Hamiltonian flows on symplectic manifolds of the estimate proved by Ballmann and Wojtkovski in \cite{BaWoEnGeo} for the dynamical entropy of the geodesic flow on a compact Riemannian manifold of nonpositive sectional curvature. Given such a Riemannian manifold $M,$ Ballmann and Wojtkovski proved that the dynamical entropy $h_{\mu}$ of the geodesic flow on $M$ satisfies the following inequality: $$ h_{\mu} \geq \int_{SM} \traccia \sqrt{-K(v)} d\mu(v), $$ \noindent where $v$ is a unit vector in $T_pM$, if $p$ is a point in $M$, $SM$ is the unit tangent bundle on $M,$ $K(v)$ is defined as $K(v) = \mathcal{R}(\cdot,v)v$, with $\mathcal{R}$ Riemannian curvature of $M$, and $\mu$ is the normalized Liouville measure on $SM$. We consider a symplectic manifold $M$ of dimension $2n$, and a compact submanifold $N$ of $M,$ given by the regular level set of a Hamiltonian function on $M$; moreover we consider a smooth Lagrangian distribution of rank $n-1$ on $N,$ and we assume that the reduced curvature $\hat{R}_z^h$ of the Hamiltonian vector field $\vec h$ is nonpositive. Then we prove that under these assumptions the dynamical entropy $h_{\mu}$ of the Hamiltonian flow w.r.t. the normalized Liouville measure on $N$ satisfies: h_{\mu} \geq \int_N \traccia \sqrt{-\hat{R}_z^h} d\mu.