Many dynamical systems can be naturally represented as `Bratteli-Vershik' (or `adic') systems, which provide an appealing combinatorial description of their dynamics. If an adic system X satisfies two technical conditions (`focus' and `bounded width') then we show how to represent X using a two-dimensional subshift of finite type Y; each `row' in a Y-admissible configuration corresponds to an infinite path in the Bratteli diagram of X, and the vertical shift on Y corresponds to the `successor' map of X. Any Y-admissible configuration can then be recoded as the spacetime diagram of a one-dimensional cellular automaton F; in this way X is `embedded' in F (i.e. X is conjugate to a subsystem of F). With this technique, we can embed many odometers, Toeplitz systems, and constant-length substitution systems in one-dimensional cellular automata.
We study simple, properly ordered nonexpansive Bratteli-Vershik ($BV$) systems. Correcting a mistake in an earlier paper, we redefine the classes standard nonexpansive ($SNE$) and strong standard nonexpansive ($SSNE$). We define also the classes of very well timed and well timed systems, their opposing classes of untimed and very untimed systems (which feature, as subclasses of "Case (2)", in the work of Downarowicz and Maass as well as Hoynes on expansiveness of $BV$ systems of finite topological rank), and several related classes according to the existence of indistinguishable pairs (of some…
A Cantor minimal system is of finite topological rank if it has a Bratteli-Vershik representation whose number of vertices per level is uniformly bounded. We prove that if the topological rank of a minimal dynamical system on a Cantor set is finite then all its minimal Cantor factors have finite topological rank as well. This gives an affirmative answer to a question posed by Donoso, Durand, Maass, and Petite.
We consider backward filtrations generated by processes coming from deterministic and probabilistic cellular automata. We prove that these filtrations are standard in the classical sense of Vershik's theory, but we also study them from another point of view that takes into account the measurepreserving action of the shift map, for which each sigma-algebra in the filtrations is invariant. This initiates what we call the dynamical classification of factor filtrations, and the examples we study show that this classification leads to different results.