 Entropy of a hyperbolic toral automorphism

For a two-dimensional hyperbolic toral automorphism, the stable and unstable eigenvalues obey $|{\lambda }_s|<1<|{\lambda }_u|$. In a sufficiently small Bowen ball, lifting to the stable and unstable coordinates gives widths proportional to $ϵ$ and $ϵ|{\lambda }_u{|}^{-(n-1)}$. Its normalized Haar measure is therefore proportional to ${ϵ}^2|{\lambda }_u{|}^{-(n-1)}$, uniformly in the centre. Maximal separated sets cover by radius-$ϵ$ Bowen balls and pack disjoint radius-$ϵ/2$ Bowen balls, so their exponential growth rate is $\log |{\lambda }_u|$. Smallness of $ϵ$ must exclude nonzero lattice jumps between successive lifted iterates; this is essential to the ball-volume argument.