Parabolic Flows Renormalized by Partially Hyperbolic Maps

We consider parabolic flows on 3-dimensional manifolds which are renormalized by circle extensions of Anosov diffeormorphisms. This class of flows includes nilflows on the Heisenberg nilmanifold which are renormalized by partially hyperbolic automorphisms. The transfer operators associated to the renormalization maps, acting on anisotropic Sobolev spaces, are known to have good spectral properties (this relies on ideas which have some resemblance to representation theory but also apply to non-algebraic systems). The spectral information is used to describe the deviation of ergodic averages and solutions of the cohomological equation for the parabolic flow.