Dense Phenomena for Ergodic Schr\"odinger Operators: I. Spectrum, Integrated Density of States, and Lyapunov Exponent

We consider Schr\"odinger operators in $\ell^2(\Z)$ whose potentials are defined via continuous sampling along the orbits of a homeomorphism on a compact metric space. We show that for each non-atomic ergodic measure $\mu$, there is a dense set of sampling functions such that the associated almost sure spectrum has finitely many gaps, the integrated density of states is smooth, and the Lyapunov exponent is smooth and positive. As a byproduct we answer a question of Walters about the existence of non-uniform $\SL(2,\R)$ cocycles in the affirmative.