On density of ergodic measures and generic points

Abstract

We introduce two properties of dynamical systems on Polish metric spaces: closeability and linkability. We show that they imply density of ergodic measures in the space of invariant probability measures and the existence of a generic point for every invariant measure. In the compact case, it follows from our conditions that the set of invariant measures is either a singleton of a measure concentrated on a periodic orbit or the Poulsen simplex. We provide examples showing that closability and linkability are independent properties. Our theory applies to systems with the periodic specification property, irreducible Markov chains over a countable alphabet, certain coded systems including $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$-shifts and $S$-gap shifts, $C^{1}$-generic diffeomorphisms of a compact manifold $M$ and certain geodesic flows of a complete connected negatively curved manifold.