Equilibrium Measures for Maps with Inducing Schemes

We introduce a class of continuous maps f of a compact metric space I admitting inducing schemes and describe the tower constructions associated with them. We then establish a thermodynamical formalism, i.e., describe a class of real-valued potential functions \phi on I which admit unique equilibrium measures \mu_\phi minimizing the free energy for a certain class of measures. We also describe ergodic properties of equilibrium measures including decay of correlation and the Central Limit Theorem. Our results apply in particular to some one-dimensional unimodal and multimodal maps as well as to multidimensional nonuniformly hyperbolic maps admitting Young's tower. Examples of potential functions to which our theory applies include \phi_t=-t\log|df| with t\in(t_0, t_1) for some t_0<1<t_1. In the particular case of S-unimodal maps we show that one can choose t_0<0 and that the class of measures under consideration comprises all invariant Borel probability measures. Thus our results establish existence and uniqueness of both the measure of maximal entropy (by a different method than Hofbauer) and the absolutely continuous invariant measure extending results by Bruin and Keller for the parameters under consideration.