Singular analytic linear cocycles with negative infinite Lyapunov exponents

Abstract

We show that linear analytic cocycles where all Lyapunov exponents are negative infinite are nilpotent. For such one-frequency cocycles we show that they can be analytically conjugated to an upper triangular cocycle or a Jordan normal form. As a consequence, an arbitrarily small analytic perturbation leads to distinct Lyapunov exponents. Moreover, in the one-frequency case where the $k$-th Lyapunov exponent is finite and the $k+1$st negative infinite, we obtain a simple criterion for domination in which case there is a splitting into a nilpotent part and an invertible part.