Torsion of instability zones for conservative twist maps on the annulus

Abstract

For a twist map $f$ of the annulus preserving the Lebesgue measure, we give sufficient conditions to assure the existence of a set of positive measure of points with non-zero asymptotic torsion. In particular, we deduce that every bounded instability region for $f$ contains a set of positive measure of points with non-zero asymptotic torsion. Moreover, for an exact symplectic twist map $f$, we provide a simple, geometric proof of a result by Cheng and Sun (see [CS96]) which characterizes ${\mathcal{C}}^0$-integrability of $f$ by the absence of conjugate points.