Suppose $(X,σ)$ is a subshift, $P_X(n)$ is the word complexity function of $X$, and ${\rm Aut}(X)$ is the group of automorphisms of $X$. We show that if $P_X(n)=o(n^2/\log^2 n)$, then ${\rm Aut}(X)$ is amenable (as a countable, discrete group). We further show that if $P_X(n)=o(n^2)$, then ${\rm Aut}(X)$ can never contain a nonabelian free semigroup (and, in particular, can never contain a nonabelian free subgroup). This is in contrast to recent examples, due to Salo and Schraudner, of subshifts with quadratic complexity that do contain such a semigroup.
Let $(X, σ)$ be a transitive sofic shift and let $\rm{Aut}(X)$ denote its automorphism group. We generalize a result of Frisch, Schlank, and Tamuz to show that any normal amenable subgroup of $\rm{Aut}(X)$ must be contained in the subgroup generated by the shift. We also show that the result does not extend to higher dimensions by giving an example of a two-dimensional mixing shift of finite type whose automorphism group is amenable and not generated by the shift maps.
We show that every normal amenable subgroup of the automorphism group of the full shift is contained in its center. This follows from the analysis of this group's Furstenberg topological boundary, through the construction of a minimal and strongly proximal action. We extend this result to higher dimensional full shifts. This also provides a new proof of Ryan's Theorem and of the fact that these groups contain free groups.
We introduce a notion of entropy for automorphisms of discrete groups which admit amenable actions on a compact space. This entropy is dual to classical topological entropy in the sense that if G is discrete and abelian then our notion of entropy agrees with the topological entropy of the induced automorphism on the (compact) dual group of G. We prove a number of basic properties of this dual entropy and give a few calculations. In particular, we are able to give precise calculations for arbitrary automorphisms of crystallographic groups.
Let $Γ$ be an amenable countable discrete group. Fix an ergodic free nonsingular action of $Γ$ on a nonatomic standard probability space. Let $G$ be a compactly generated locally compact second countable group such that the closure of the group of inner automorphisms of $G$ is compact in the natural topology. It is shown that there exists a {\it bounded} ergodic $G$-valued cocycle of $Γ$.
We study automorphism groups of sparse graphs from the viewpoint of topological dynamics and the Kechris, Pestov, Todorčević correspondence. We investigate amenable and extremely amenable subgroups of these groups using the space of orientations of the graph and results from structural Ramsey theory. Resolving one of the open questions in the area, we show that Hrushovski's example of an $ω$-categorical sparse graph has no $ω$-categorical expansion with extremely amenable automorphism group.
The group of automorphisms of a symbolic dynamical system is countable, but often very large. For example, for a mixing subshift of finite type, the automorphism group contains isomorphic copies of the free group on two generators and the direct sum of countably many copies of $\mathbb{Z}$. In contrast, the group of automorphisms of a symbolic system of zero entropy seems to be highly constrained. Our main result is that the automorphism group of any minimal subshift of stretched exponential growth with exponent $<1/2$, is amenable (as a countable discrete group). For shifts of polynomial grow…
We investigate correspondences between extreme amenability and amenability of automorphism groups of Fraïssé-Hrushovski generic structures that are obtained from smooth classes, and their Ramsey type properties of their smooth classes, similar to Kechris, Pestov and Todorcevic, and Tatch Moore. In particular, we focus on some Fraïssé-Hrushovski generic structures that are obtained from pre-dimension functions. Using these correspondences, we prove that automorphism groups of ordered Hrushovski generic graphs are not extremely amenable in both cases of collapsed and uncollapsed. Moreover, we pr…
In this paper, we compute universal minimal flows of groups of automorphisms of uncountable $ω$-homogeneous graphs, $K_n$-free graphs, hypergraphs, partially ordered sets, and their extensions with an $ω$-homogeneous ordering. We present an easy construction of such structures, expanding the jungle of extremely amenable groups.
For a countable amenable group Γand an element f in the integral group ring ZΓbeing invertible in the group von Neumann algebra of Γ, we show that the entropy of the shift action of Γon the Pontryagin dual of the quotient of ZΓby its left ideal generated by f is the logarithm of the Fuglede-Kadison determinant of f. For the proof, we establish an \ell^p-version of Rufus Bowen's definition of topological entropy, addition formulas for group extensions of countable amenable group actions, and an approximation formula for the Fuglede-Kadison determinant of f in terms of the determinants of pertur…
We prove several theorems relating amenability of groups in various categories (discrete, definable, topological, automorphism group) to model-theoretic invariants (quotients by connected components, Lascar Galois group, G-compactness, ...). For example, if $M$ is a countable, $ω$-categorical structure and $Aut(M)$ is amenable, as a topological group, then the Lascar Galois group $Gal_{L}(T)$ of the theory $T$ of $M$ is compact, Hausdorff (also over any finite set of parameters), that is $T$ is G-compact. An essentially special case is that if $Aut(M)$ is extremely amenable, then $Gal_{L}(T)$ …
Birkhoff's theorem states that for an ergodic automorphism, the time averages converge to the space average. Given sequence $ψ(n)\to+0$, U. Krengel proved that for any ergodic automorphism there is an indicator such that the corresponding time averages converged a.e. with a rate slower than $ψ$. We prove again similar statements answering a question of I. Podvigin in passing.
We study the automorphisms of compact Kähler manifolds having slow dynamics. By adapting Gromov's classical argument, we give an upper bound on the polynomial entropy and study its possible values in dimensions $2$ and $3$. We prove that every automorphism with sublinear derivative growth is an isometry ; a counter-example is given in the $C^{\infty}$ context, answering negatively a question of Artigue, Carrasco-Olivera and Monteverde on polynomial entropy. Finally, we classify minimal automorphisms in dimension $2$ and prove they exist only on tori. We conjecture that this is true for any dim…
In this paper we prove that the automorphism groups of certain countable generic structures are not amenable. For doing that, we first prove the existence of particular matrices that do not satisfy the convex Ramsey condition. For a pair of elements in a smooth class, we introduce the property of forming a free-pseudoplane in the generic structure. We then prove the non-amenability of the automorphism group of a generic structure obtained from a smooth class with a pair that forms a free-pseudoplane. As an application we show that the automorphism group of an ab-initio generic structure that i…
A topological group $G$ is extremely amenable if every continuous action of $G$ on a compact space has a fixed point. Using the concentration of measure techniques developed by Gromov and Milman, we prove that the group of automorphisms of a Lebesgue space with a non-atomic measure is extremely amenable with the weak topology but not with the uniform one. Strengthening a de la Harpe's result, we show that a von Neumann algebra is approximately finite-dimensional if and only if its unitary group with the strong topology is the product of an extremely amenable group with a compact group.
We prove that for any transitive subshift $X$ with word complexity function $c_n(X)$, if $\liminf \frac{\log (c_n(X)/n)}{\log \log \log n} = 0$, then the quotient group $\textrm{Aut}(X,σ) / \langle σ\rangle$ of the automorphism group of $X$ by the subgroup generated by the shift $σ$ is locally finite. We prove that significantly weaker upper bounds on $c_n(X)$ imply the same conclusion if the Gap Conjecture from geometric group theory is true. Our proofs rely on a general upper bound for the number of automorphisms of $X$ of range $n$ in terms of word complexity, which may be of independent in…
We prove an entropy formula for certain expansive actions of a countable discrete residually finite group $Γ$ by automorphisms of compact abelian groups in terms of Fuglede-Kadison determinants. This extends an earlier result proved by the first author under somewhat more restrictive conditions. The main tools for this generalization are a representation of the $Γ$-action by means of a `fundamental homoclinic point', and the description of entropy in terms of the renormalized logarithmic growth-rate of the set of $Γ_n$-fixed points, where $(Γ_n, n\ge1)$ is a decreasing sequence of finite index…
We prove for residually finite groups the following long standing conjecture: the number of twisted conjugacy classes of an automorphism of a finitely generated group is equal (if it is finite) to the number of finite dimensional irreducible unitary representations being invariant for the dual of this automorphism. Also, we prove that any finitely generated residually finite non-amenable group has the R-infinity property (any automorphism has infinitely many twisted conjugacy classes). This gives a lot of new examples and covers many known classes of such groups.
We show that the only random orderings of finite graphs that are invariant under isomorphism and induced subgraph are the uniform random orderings. We show how this implies the unique ergodicity of the automorphism group of the random graph. We give similar theorems for other structures, including, for example, metric spaces. These give the first examples of uniquely ergodic groups, other than compact groups and extremely amenable groups, after Glasner and Weiss's example of the group of all permutations of the integers. We also contrast these results to those for certain special classes of gr…
We show that the Gurarij space $\mathbb{G}$ has extremely amenable automorphism group. This answers a question of Melleray and Tsankov. We also compute the universal minimal flow of the automorphism group of the Poulsen simplex $\mathbb{P}$ and we prove that it consists of the canonical action on $\mathbb{P}$ itself. This answers a question of Conley and Törnquist. We show that the pointwise stabilizer of any closed proper face of $\mathbb{P}$ is extremely amenable. Similarly, the pointwise stabilizer of any closed proper biface of the unit ball of the dual of the Gurarij space (the Lusky simp…
We prove that for a measure preserving action of a sofic group with positive sofic entropy, the set of points with finite stabilizer have positive measure. This extends results of Weiss and Seward for amenable groups and free groups, respectively. It follows that the action of a sofic group on its subgroups by inner automorphisms has zero topological sofic entropy, and a faithful action with completely positive sofic entropy must be free.
We describe a general program for studying the dynamics of surjective endomorphisms of algebraic varieties that are amenable to techniques from the minimal model program. We obtain density results on the pre-periodic points of surjective endomorphisms of varieties admitting an int-amplified endomorphism, and reduce certain cases of the Medvedev-Scanlon conjecture to so called Q-abelian varieties using our approach. We also provide a connection between the existence of an automorphism with positive entropy and group of connected components of a variety. In particular, we show that if $X$ is nor…
Let $(X, \cal B, ν)$ be a probability space and let $Γ$ be a countable group of $ν$-preserving invertible maps of $X$ into itself. To a probability measure $μ$ on $Γ$ corresponds a random walk on $X$ with Markov operator $P$ given by $Pψ(x) = \sum_{a} ψ(ax) \, μ(a)$. A powerful tool is the spectral gap property for the operator $P$ when it holds. We consider various examples of ergodic $Γ$-actions and random walks and their extensions by a vector space: groups of automorphisms or affine transformations on compact nilmanifolds, random walk in random scenery on non amenable groups, translations …
We study random walk on topological full groups of subshifts, and show the existence of infinite, finitely generated, simple groups with the Liouville property. Results by Matui and Juschenko-Monod have shown that the derived subgroups of topological full groups of minimal subshifts provide the first examples of finitely generated, simple amenable groups. We show that if the (not necessarily minimal) subshift has a complexity function that grows slowly enough (e.g. linearly), then every symmetric and finitely supported probability measure on the topological full group has trivial Poisson-Furst…
Given a locally finite graph $Γ$, an amenable subgroup $G$ of graph automorphisms acting freely and almost transitively on its vertices, and a $G$-invariant activity function $λ$, consider the free energy $f_G(Γ,λ)$ of the hardcore model defined on the set of independent sets in $Γ$ weighted by $λ$. Under the assumption that $G$ is finitely generated and its word problem can be solved in exponential time, we define suitable ensembles of hardcore models and prove the following: if $\|λ\|_\infty < λ_c(Δ)$, there exists a randomized $ε$-additive approximation scheme for $f_G(Γ,λ)$ that runs in ti…
Polynomial log-volume growth in slow dynamics and the GK-dimensions of twisted homogeneous coordinate rings
National Taiwan University（国立台湾大学）；National Center for Theoretical Sciences（国家理论科学中心）；the University of Tokyo（东京大学）；National Center for Theoretical Sciences, Mathematics Division, National Taiwan University（国立台湾大学国家理论科学中心数学组）；National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）
