Generic smooth cocycles of degree zero over irrational rotations

If a rotation α of has unbounded partial quotients then "most" of its skew-product diffeomorphic extensions to the 2-torus × defined by $C^1$ cocycles of topological degree zero enjoy nontrivial ergodic properties. In fact they admit a cyclic approximation with speed o(1/n) and have nondiscrete (simple) spectrum. Similar results are obtained for $C^r$ cocycles if α admits a sufficiently good approximation by rationals. For a.e. α and generic $C^1$ cocycles the speed can be improved to o(1/(nlogn)). For generic α and generic $C^r$ cocycles (r = 1,...,∞) the spectral measure of the skew product has a continuous component and Hausdorff dimension zero.