Statistical Properties of Generalized Horseshoe Maps

We apply thermodynamic formalism to a generalized horseshoe map. We prove that a tailored anisotropic Banach space with weighted norms yields a spectral gap for the transfer operator, implying the existence of a unique physical measure. Under the virtually expanding condition, this measure is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure, with density in the Sobolev space $H_\mu$, for some $\mu<1/2$.