Induced maps,Markov extensions and invariant measures in one-dimensional dynamics

A way to study ergodic and measure theoretic aspects of interval maps is by means of the Markov extension. This tool, which ties interval maps to the theory of Markov chains, was introduced by Hofbauer and Keller. More generally known are induced maps, i.e. maps that, restricted to an element of an interval partition, coincide with an iterate of the original map.We will discuss the relation between the Markov extension and induced maps. The main idea is that an induced map of an interval map often appears as a first return map in the Markov extension. For S-unimodal maps, we derive a necessary condition for the existence of invariant probability measures which are absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure. Two corollaries are given.