A Smale space is a chaotic dynamical system with canonical coordinates of contracting and expanding directions. The basic sets for Smale’s Axiom A systems are a key class of examples. R.F. Williams considered the special case where the basic set had a totally disconnected contracting set and a Euclidean expanding one. He provided a construction using inverse limits of such examples and also proved that (under appropriate hyptotheses) all such basic sets arose from this construction. We will be working in the metric setting of Smale spaces, but the goal is to extend Williams’ results by removing all hypotheses on the unstable sets. We give criteria on a stationary inverse limit which ensures the result is a Smale space. We also prove that any irreducible Smale space with totally disconnected local stable sets is obtained through this construction. / Graduate

We study aspects of noncommutative geometry on hyperbolic dynamical systems known as Smale spaces. In particular, there are two C*-algebras, defined on the stable and unstable groupoids arising from the hyperbolic dynamics. These give rise to two additional crossed product C*-algebras known as the stable and unstable Ruelle algebras. We show that the Ruelle algebras exhibit noncommutative Poincaré duality. As a consequence we obtain isomorphisms between the K-theory and K-homology groups of the stable and unstable Ruelle algebras. A second result defines spectral triples on these C*-algebras and we show that the spectral dimension recovers the topological entropy of the Smale space itself. Finally we define a natural Fredholm module on the Ruelle algebras in the special case that the Smale space is a shift of finite type. Using unitary operators arising from the Pimsner-Voiculescu sequence we compute the index pairing with our Fredholm module for specific examples.

We model hyperbolic toral automorphisms by two types of Smale spaces; shifts of finite type and substitution tilings spaces. Smale spaces are dynamical systems with local hyperbolic product structure. In 1970, Bowen showed that an irreducible Smale space is a factor of a shift of finite type by showing that it has Markov partitions. Putnam extended Bowen's theorem by showing that every irreducible Smale space has a factor map that can be split into a s-bijective and u-bijective map; thereby better modelling a Smale space on its characterizing expanding and contracting spaces separately. In this thesis, we define two new constructions of Markov partitions for hyperbolic toral automorphisms inspired by the work of Adler, Weiss, and Praggastis. With one of the constructions, we investigate when a factor map from a shift of finite type to a hyperbolic toral automorphism can be written as a composition of a s-bijective and u-bijective map and we show that if such a splitting exists then the Markov partition must satisfy a Border Continuity condition. The second construction can be thought of as an explicit example of Putnam's theorem for the case of hyperbolic toral automorphisms whose defining matrix is in dimension 2 and has positive entries. We define a full splitting for all such hyperbolic toral automorphisms with one exception; the Arnold Cat map. / Graduate

We review the construction of three Smale spaces associated to a unimodular Pisot substitution on d letters: a subshift of finite type (SFT), a substitution tiling space, and a hyperbolic toral automorphism on the Euclidean d-torus. By considering an SFT whose elements are biinfinite, rather than infinite, paths in the graph associated to the substitution, we modify a well-known map to obtain a factor map between our SFT and the hyperbolic toral automorphism on the d-torus given by the incidence matrix of the substitution. We prove that if the tiling substitution forces its border, then this factor map is the composition of an s-resolving factor map from the SFT to a one-dimensional substitution tiling space and a u-resolving factor map from the tiling space to the d-torus.

We review the construction of three Smale spaces associated to a unimodular Pisot substitution on d letters: a subshift of finite type (SFT), a substitution tiling space, and a hyperbolic toral automorphism on the Euclidean d-torus. By considering an SFT whose elements are biinfinite, rather than infinite, paths in the graph associated to the substitution, we modify a well-known map to obtain a factor map between our SFT and the hyperbolic toral automorphism on the d-torus given by the incidence matrix of the substitution. We prove that if the tiling substitution forces its border, then this factor map is the composition of an s-resolving factor map from the SFT to a one-dimensional substitution tiling space and a u-resolving factor map from the tiling space to the d-torus.