Convergence of pushforward measures for certain countably piecewise linear Markov maps

We study piecewise linear Markov maps, with countable Markov partitions, inspired by a problem of the Miklós Schweitzer competition in 2022. We introduce $\ell$-Markov partitions and apply ideas of symbolic dynamics to our systems, relating them to Markov shifts. We survey how the Frobenius--Perron operators of these systems can be represented by matrices, and adapt results to countable alphabets. We apply these statements to prove a convergence theorem on the pushforwards of absolutely continuous measures. This enables us to prove a variety of useful ergodic properties of our maps and study even non-$σ$-finite absolutely continuous invariant measures. We explain how our results are not implied by previous ones and apply the convergence theorem to solve the original problem in the competition.