A spectral gap for transer operators of piecewise expanding maps

Abstract: We provide a simplified proof of the existence, under some assumptions, of a spectral gap for the Perron-Frobenius operator of piecewise uniformly expanding maps on Riemannian manifolds when acting on some Sobolev spaces. Its consequences include, among others, the existence of invariant physical measures, and an exponential decay of correlations for suitable observables. These features are then adapted to different function spaces (functions with bounded variation or bounded oscillation), so as to give a new insight of - and generalize - earlier results.