Markov structures and decay of correlations for non-uniformly expanding dynamical systems

We consider non-uniformly expanding maps on compact Riemannian manifolds of arbitrary dimension, possibly having discontinuities and/or critical sets, and show that under some general conditions they admit an induced Markov tower structure. Moreover, the decay of the return time function can be controlled in terms of the time generic points need to achieve some uniform expanding behavior. As a consequence we obtain some rates for the decay of correlations of those maps and conditions for the validity of the Central Limit Theorem. (c) 2005 Elsevier SAS. All rights reserved.