Symplectomorphisms with positive metric entropy

Abstract

We obtain a dichotomy for $C^1$-generic symplectomorphisms: either all the Lyapunov exponents of almost every point vanish, or the map is partially hyperbolic and ergodic with respect to volume. This completes a program first put forth by Ricardo Mañé. A main ingredient in our proof is a generalization to partially hyperbolic invariant sets of the main result in [Dolgopyat-Wilkinson] that stable accessibility is $C^1$ dense among partially hyperbolic diffeomorphisms.