Ergodicity and mixing of invariant capacities and applications

We introduce the notion of common conditional expectation to investigate Birkhoff’s ergodic theorem and subadditive ergodic theorem for invariant upper probabilities. If, in addition, the upper probability is ergodic, we construct an invariant probability to characterize the limit of the ergodic mean. Moreover, this skeleton probability is the unique ergodic probability in the core of the upper probability, that is equal to all probabilities in the core on all invariant sets. We have the following applications of these two theorems: ∙ provide a strong law of large numbers for ergodic stationary sequence on upper probability spaces; ∙ prove the multiplicative ergodic theorem on upper probability spaces; ∙ establish a criterion for the ergodicity of upper probabilities in terms of independence. Furthermore, we introduce and study weak mixing for capacity preserving systems. Using the skeleton idea, we also provide several characterizations of weak mixing for invariant upper probabilities. Finally, we provide examples of ergodic and weakly mixing capacity preserving systems. As applications, we obtain new results in the classical ergodic theory, for example, in characterizing dynamical properties on probability preserving systems, such as weak mixing, periodicity. Moreover, we use our results in the nonlinear theory to deduce the asymptotic independence, Birkhoff’s type ergodic theorem, subadditive ergodic theorem, and multiplicative ergodic theorem for noninvariant probabilities.