The marked length spectrum (MLS) of a closed negatively curved manifold $(M, g)$ is known to determine the metric g under various circumstances. We show that, in these cases, (approximate) values of the MLS on a sufficiently large finite set approximately determine the metric. Our approach is to recover the hypotheses of our main theorems in Butt [Quantative marked length spectrum rigidity. Preprint, 2022], namely, multiplicative closeness of the MLS functions on the entire set of closed geodesics of M. We use mainly dynamical tools and arguments, but take great care to show that the constants involved depend only on concrete geometric information about the given Riemannian metrics, such as the dimension, diameter and sectional curvature bounds.

We extend a result of Lopes and Thieullen [Sub-actions for Anosov flows. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 25(2) (2005), 605–628] on sub-actions for smooth Anosov flows to the setting of geodesic flow on locally CAT($-1$) spaces. This allows us to use arguments originally due to Croke and Dairbekov to prove a volume rigidity theorem for some interesting locally CAT($-1$) spaces, including quotients of Fuchsian buildings and surface amalgams.

It is conjectured that the only integrable metrics on the two-dimensional torus are Liouville metrics. In this paper, we study a deformative version of this conjecture: we consider integrable deformations of a non-flat Liouville metric in a conformal class and show that for a fairly large class of such deformations, the deformed metric is again Liouville. The principal idea of the argument is that the preservation of rational invariant tori in the foliation of the phase space forces a linear combination on the Fourier coefficients of the deformation to vanish. Showing that the resulting linear system is non-degenerate will then yield the claim. Since our method of proof immediately carries over to higher dimensional tori, we obtain analogous statements in this more general case. To put our results in perspective, we review existing results about integrable metrics on the torus.

We prove a joint partial equidistribution result for common perpendiculars with given density on equidistributing equidistant hypersurfaces, towards a measure supported on truncated stable leaves. We recover a result of Marklof on the joint partial equidistribution of Farey fractions at a given density, and give several analogous arithmetic applications, including in Bruhat–Tits trees.

In this paper, we study the ergodicity of the geodesic flows on surfaces with no focal points. Let M be a smooth connected and closed surface equipped with a $C^{\infty }$ Riemannian metric g, whose genus $\mathfrak {g} \geq 2$. Suppose that $(M,g)$ has no focal points. We prove that the geodesic flow on the unit tangent bundle of M is ergodic with respect to the Liouville measure, under the assumption that the set of points on M with negative curvature has at most finitely many connected components.

Under certain assumptions on CAT(0) spaces, we show that the geodesic flow is topologically mixing. In particular, the Bowen–Margulis’ measure finiteness assumption used by Ricks [Flat strips, Bowen–Margulis measures, and mixing of the geodesic flow for rank one CAT(0) spaces. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 37 (2017), 939–970] is removed. We also construct examples of CAT(0) spaces that do not admit finite Bowen–Margulis measure.

We generalize the higher rank rigidity theorem to a class of Finsler spaces, i.e. Berwald spaces. More precisely, we prove that a complete connected Berwald space of finite volume and bounded non-positive flag curvature with rank at least two whose universal cover is irreducible is a locally symmetric space or a locally Minkowski space.

Given a smooth compact surface without focal points and of higher genus, it is shown that its geodesic flow is semi-conjugate to a continuous expansive flow with a local product structure such that the semi-conjugation preserves time parametrization. It is concluded that the geodesic flow has a unique measure of maximal entropy.

The width of a Lagrangian is the largest capacity of a ball that can be symplectically embedded into the ambient manifold such that the ball intersects the Lagrangian exactly along the real part of the ball. Due to Dimitroglou Rizell, finite width is an obstruction to a Lagrangian admitting an exact Lagrangian cap in the sense of Eliashberg–Murphy. In this paper we introduce a new method for bounding the width of a Lagrangian $Q$ by considering the Lagrangian Floer cohomology of an auxiliary Lagrangian $L$ with respect to a Hamiltonian whose chords correspond to geodesic paths in $Q$. This is formalized as a wrapped version of the Floer–Hofer–Wysocki capacity and we establish an associated energy–capacity inequality with the help of a closed–open map. For any orientable Lagrangian $Q$ admitting a metric of non-positive sectional curvature in a Liouville manifold, we show the width of $Q$ is bounded above by four times its displacement energy.

We prove that the conservativity of the geodesic flow is equivalent to the ergodicity of the geodesic flow with respect to the Bowen-Margulis measure on visibility manifolds.