Coexistence of two contrasting recurrence properties of certain non-integrable cocycles

Abstract

We study the recurrence properties of certain skew products over symmetric interval exchange transformations, including rotations, with cocycles of the form $f(x)=-\frac{1}{x^a}+\frac{1}{(1-x)^a}$, where $a>1$. We prove that typically, such systems are dissipative. However, at the same time they are \emph{topologically recurrent}, i.e. for every open rectangle $A\subset[0,1)\times \R$, there exists an infinite sequence $(q_n)_{n=1}^{\infty}$ such that $T^{q_n}_f(A)\cap A\neq\emptyset$.