Slow and Fast Escape for Open Intermittent Maps

If a system mixes too slowly, putting a hole in it can completely destroy the richness of the dynamics. Here we study this instability for a class of intermittent maps with a family of slowly mixing measures. We show that there are three regimes: (1) standard hyperbolic-like behavior where the rate of mixing is faster than the rate of escape through the hole, there is a unique limiting absolutely continuous conditionally invariant measure (accim) and there is a complete thermodynamic description of the dynamics on the survivor set; (2) an intermediate regime, where the rate of mixing and escape through the hole coincide, limiting accims exist, but much of the thermodynamic picture breaks down; (3) a subexponentially mixing regime where the slow mixing means that mass simply accumulates on the parabolic fixed point. We give a complete picture of the transitions and stability properties (in the size of the hole and as we move through the family) in this class of open systems. In particular, we are able to recover a form of stability in the third regime above via the dynamics on the survivor set, even when no limiting accim exists.