Gibbs-Markov structures and limit laws for partially hyperbolic attractors with mostly expanding central direction

We consider a partially hyperbolic set K on a Riemannian manifold M whose tangent space splits as TKM = E-cu circle plus E-s, for which the center-unstable direction E-cu expands non-uniformly on some local unstable disk. We show that under these assumptions f induces a Gibbs-Markov structure. Moreover, the decay of the return time function can be controlled in terms of the time typical points need to achieve some uniform expanding behavior in the center-unstable direction. As an application of the main result we obtain certain rates for decay of correlations, large deviations, an almost sure invariance principle and the validity of the central limit theorem. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.