C^0-stability of topological entropy for Reeb flows in dimension 3

Abstract

We study stability properties of the topological entropy of Reeb flows on contact 3-manifolds with respect to the C^0-distance on the space of contact forms. Our main results show that a C^\infty-generic contact form on a closed co-oriented contact 3-manifold (Y,\xi) is a lower semi-continuity point for the topological entropy, seen as a functional on the space of contact forms of (Y,\xi) endowed with the C^0-distance. We also study the stability of the topological entropy of geodesic flows of Riemannian metrics on closed surfaces. In this setting, we show that a non-degenerate Riemannian metric on a closed surface S is a lower semi-continuity point of the topological entropy, seen as a functional on the space of Riemannian metrics on S endowed with the C^0-distance.