Unique ergodicity of horospheric foliations revisited

Abstract

With each rational function on the Riemann sphere, Lyubich–Minsky construction (1997) associates an abstract topological space called the quotient hyperbolic lamination. The latter space carries the so-called vertical geodesic flow with Anosov property. Its unstable foliation is what we call the quotient horospheric lamination. We consider the case of hyperbolic rational function, and more generally, functions postcritically finite on the Julia set without parabolics, that do not belong to the following list of exceptions: powers, Chebyshev polynomials and Latt‘es examples. In this case the quotient horospheric lamination is known to be minimal, while restricted to the union of nonisolated hyperbolic leaves (Glutsyuk, 2007). In the present paper we prove its unique ergodicity. To this end, we introduce the so-called transversely contracting flows and homeomorphisms (on abstract compact metrizable topological spaces), which include the vertical geodesic flows under consideration and the usual Anosov flows and diffeomorphisms. We prove a version of our unique ergodicity result for the transversely contracting flows and homeomorphisms. Particular cases for Anosov flows and diffeomorphisms are given by classical results by Bowen, Marcus, Furstenberg, Margulis, et al. We give a new and purely geometric proof, which seems to be simpler than the classical ones (which use either Markov partitions, K-property, or harmonic analysis).