Symbolic dynamics for pointwise hyperbolic systems on open regions

Abstract Under certain conditions, we construct a countable Markov partition for pointwise hyperbolic diffeomorphism $f:M\rightarrow M$ on an open invariant subset $O\subset M$ , which allows the Lyapunov exponents to be zero. From this partition, we define a symbolic extension that is finite-to-one and onto a subset of O that carries the same finite f -invariant measures as O . Our method relies upon shadowing theory of a recurrent-pointwise-pseudo-orbit that we introduce. As a canonical application, we estimate the number of closed orbits for f .