Examples of Discontinuity of Lyapunov Exponent in Smooth Quasi-Periodic Cocycles

Abstract

We study the regularity of the Lyapunov exponent for quasi-periodic cocycles $(T_\omega, A)$ where $T_\omega$ is an irrational rotation $x\to x+ 2\pi\omega$ on $\SS^1$ and $A\in {\cal C}^l(\SS^1, SL(2,\mathbb{R}))$, $0\le l\le \infty$. For any fixed $l=0, 1, 2, \cdots, \infty$ and any fixed $\omega$ of bounded-type, we construct $D_{l}\in {\cal C}^l(\SS^1, SL(2,\mathbb{R}))$ such that the Lyapunov exponent is not continuous at $D_{l}$ in ${\cal C}^l$-topology. We also construct such examples in a smaller Schr\"odinger class.