On the spectrum of shear flows and uniform ergodic theorems

The spectra of parallel flows (that is, flows governed by first-order differential operators parallel to one direction) are investigated, on both L2L2 spaces and weighted-L2L2 spaces. As a consequence, an example of a flow admitting a purely singular continuous spectrum is provided. For flows admitting more regular spectra the density of states is analyzed, and spaces on which it is uniformly bounded are identified. As an application, an ergodic theorem with uniform convergence is proved.