Li-Yorke Chaos for Composition Operators on $L^p$-Spaces

Abstract: Li-Yorke chaos is a popular and well-studied notion of chaos. Several simple and useful characterizations of this notion of chaos in the setting of linear dynamics were obtained recently. In this note we show that even simpler and more useful characterizations of Li-Yorke chaos can be given in the special setting of composition operators on $L^p$ spaces. As a consequence we obtain a simple characterization of weighted shifts which are Li-Yorke chaotic. We give numerous examples to show that our results are sharp.