a.e. convergence of the powers of an operator built from rotations  Consider two numbers $a,b\in R/Z$ and some integer $p\geq 1$. Let $T:L^p(R/Z)\rightarrow L^p(R/Z)$ be the operator given by
$$T(f)(x)=1/2(f(x+a)+f(x+b))$$
For which values of $a,b$ do we have almost everywhere convergence of the sequence $T^nf$ for all $f \in L^p$ ?
If $a-b$ is rational, it's not difficult to show that a.e. convergence fails. If $a=-b$ and $p>1$, then a.e. convergence follows from Stein (1961), Rota (1962). Note that if $a-b$ is not rational, then $T$ is ergodic and the mean $1/n\ \Sigma_k^n\ T^kf$ converges almost everywhere to a constant. So maybe this is the right condition (together with p>1 ?).
 A: Ok, I rethought my old comment. I believe it is better with $Af (x) = f(x+a)$ and $B f(x) = f(x+b)$ to think about
$$
 T^n = \frac{1}{2^n} (A + B)^n = \frac{1}{2^{n}} \sum_{k=0}^{n} \binom{n}{k} A^{k} B^{n-k}
 =  \frac{1}{2^{n}} B^{n} \sum_{k=0}^{n} \binom{n}{k} C^{k},
$$
where $C = AB^{-1}$ so that $Cf(x) = f(x + a - b)$. It think that one should be able to show that this converges relatively easily ... (one somehow needs to deal with the weights). 

Old Post
Let me rephrase the answer of Fabrizio Polo first: 
Consider all words $w$ in A, B of length $n$. Call this set $\mathcal{W}_n$. Now define $Af (x) = f(x+a)$ and $B f(x) = f(x+b)$. Then $T^n$ from the original post is equal to 
$$
 \frac{1}{|\mathcal{W}_n|} 
\sum w,
$$
where the sum is taken over all elements of $\mathcal{W}_n$. I am somehow unable to make that display properly.
Here $w$ stands for the appropriate product of operators. E.g. for $n - 2$, we have
$\mathcal{W}_n = \{AA, AB, BA, BB\}$ so that the expression above becomes
$$
 \frac{1}{4} (AA + AB + BA + BB),
$$
which is the $T^2$ from the original post.
Now if $a - b$ is irrational, I believe that $(\mathbb Z_+) \ast (\mathbb Z_+)$ action defined above is ergodic, so one should have almost sure convergence. However, I am not sure if this holds, since the group $(\mathbb Z_+)\ast(\mathbb Z_+)$ is not ameanable. So you will probably have to look into ergodic theorems for non ameanable actions to answer this question.
Another hope could be to somehow resum the expression for $T^n$ and be able to use more classical ergodic theorems ...
