On the Invariance of Expansive Measures for Flows

Abstract: We study expansive measures for continuous flows without fixed points on compact metric spaces, as introduced in [6]. We provide a new characterization of expansive measures through dynamical balls that, in contrast to the dynamical balls considered in [6], are actually Borel sets. This makes the theory more amenable to measure-theoretic analysis. We then establish a version of the Brin-Katok local entropy formula for flows using these generalized dynamical balls. As an application, we prove that every ergodic invariant measure with positive entropy is positively expansive, thus extending the results of [1] to the setting of regular flows. This implies that flows with positive topological entropy admit expansive invariant measures. Furthermore, we show that the stable classes of such measures have zero measure. Lastly, we prove that the set of expansive measures forms a $G_{\delta\sigma}$ subset in the weak*-topology and that every expansive measure (invariant or not) can be approximated by expansive measures supported on invariant sets.