Unique equilibrium states for Viana maps with small potentials

Abstract

We investigate the thermodynamic formalism for Viana maps-skew products obtained by coupling an expanding circle map with a slightly perturbed quadratic family on the fibers. For every H\"older potential $\varphi$ whose oscillation is below an explicit threshold, we show that an equilibrium state not only exists but is unique and satisfies an upper level-2 large-deviation principle. All of these conclusions persist under sufficiently small perturbations of the reference map.