We investigate uniform ergodic type theorems for additive and subadditive functions on a subshift over a finite alphabet. We show that every strictly ergodic subshift admits a uniform ergodic theorem for Banach-space-valued additive functions. We then give a necessary and sufficient condition on a minimal subshift to allow for a uniform subadditive ergodic theorem. This provides in particular a sufficient condition for unique ergodicity.
It has been recently proved that the automorphism group of a minimal subshift with non-superlinear word complexity is virtually $\mathbb{Z}$ [DDPM15, CK15]. In this article we extend this result to a broader class proving that the automorphism group of a minimal S-adic subshift of finite alphabet rank is virtually $\mathbb{Z}$. The proof is based on a fine combinatorial analysis of the asymptotic classes in this type of subshifts, which we prove are a finite number.
This paper studies several aspects of symbolic ({\em i.e.}\ subshift) factors of $\mathcal{S}$-adic subshifts of finite alphabet rank. First, we address a problem raised in [DDPM20] about the topological rank of symbolic factors of $\mathcal{S}$-adic subshifts and prove that this rank is at most the one of the extension system, improving results from [E20] and [GH2020]. As a consequence of our methods, we prove that finite topological rank systems are coalescent. Second, we investigate the structure of fibers $π^{-1}(y)$ of factor maps $π\colon(X,T)\to(Y,S)$ between minimal $\mathcal{S}$-adic …
We study the thermodynamic formalism for particular types of sub-additive sequences on a class of subshifts over countable alphabets. The subshifts we consider include factors of irreducible countable Markov shifts under certain conditions. We show the variational principle for topological pressure. We also study conditions for the existence and uniqueness of invariant ergodic Gibbs measures and the uniqueness of equilibrium states. As an application, we extend the theory of factors of (generalized) Gibbs measures on subshifts on finite alphabets to that on certain subshifts over countable alp…
This paper is concerned with uniform convergence in the multiplicative ergodic theorem on aperiodic subshifts. If such a subshift satisfies a certain condition, originally introduced by Boshernitzan, every locally constant SL(2,R)-valued cocycle is uniform. As a consequence, the corresponding Schrödinger operators exhibit Cantor spectrum of Lebesgue measure zero. An investigation of Boshernitzan's condition then shows that these results cover all earlier results of this type and, moreover, provide various new ones. In particular, Boshernitzan's condition is shown to hold for almost all circle …
We prove that a shift ergodic measure on a topologically mixing sub-shift is isomorphic to a Bernoulli shift whenever it is quasi invariant under permutations of finite number of coordinates. We prove also that Gibbs measures on topologically mixing subshift of finite type are quasi invariant.
A subshift with linear block complexity has at most countably many ergodic measures, and we continue of the study of the relation between such complexity and the invariant measures. By constructing minimal subshifts whose block complexity is arbitrarily close to linear but has uncountably many ergodic measures, we show that this behavior fails as soon as the block complexity is superlinear. With a different construction, we show that there exists a minimal subshift with an ergodic measure whose slow entropy grows slower than any given rate tending to infinitely but faster than any other rate m…
It is well-known that any $\mathbb{Z}$ subshift with the specification property has the property that every factor is intrinsically ergodic, i.e., every factor has a unique factor of maximal entropy. In recent work, other $\mathbb{Z}$ subshifts have been shown to possess this property as well, including $β$-shifts and a class of $S$-gap shifts. We give two results that show that the situation for $\mathbb{Z}^d$ subshifts with $d >1 $ is quite different. First, for any $d>1$, we show that any $\mathbb{Z}^d$ subshift possessing a certain mixing property must have a factor with positive entropy w…
The family of symmetric one sided subshifts in two symbols given by a sequence $a$ is studied. We analyse some of their topological properties such as transitivity, the specification property and intrinsic ergodicity. It is shown that almost every member of this family admits only one measure of maximal entropy.
If $\mathcal{A}$ is a finite set (alphabet), the shift dynamical system consists of the space $\mathcal{A}^{\mathbb{N}}$ of sequences with entries in $\mathcal{A}$, along with the left shift operator $S$. Closed $S$-invariant subsets are called subshifts and arise naturally as encodings of other systems. In this paper, we study the number of ergodic measures for transitive subshifts under a condition ("regular bispecial condition") on the possible extensions of words in the associated language. Our main result shows that under this condition, the subshift can support at most $\frac{K+1}{2}$ er…
This note revisits the problem of finding necessary and sufficient conditions for a subshift to have a continuous g-function. Results obtained by Krieger (IMS Lecture Notes-Monograph Series, 48, 306--316, 2006) on finite alphabet subshifts are generalized to countable state subshifts.
We consider ergodic families of Schrödinger operators over base dynamics given by strictly ergodic subshifts on finite alphabets. It is expected that the majority of these operators have purely singular continuous spectrum supported on a Cantor set of zero Lebesgue measure. These properties have indeed been established for large classes of operators of this type over the course of the last twenty years. We review the mechanisms leading to these results and briefly discuss analogues for CMV matrices.
We show that the image of a subshift $X$ under various injective morphisms of symbolic algebraic varieties over monoid universes with algebraic variety alphabets is a subshift of finite type, resp. a sofic subshift, if and only if so is $X$. Similarly, let $G$ be a countable monoid and let $A$, $B$ be Artinian modules over a ring. We prove that for every closed subshift submodule $Σ\subset A^G$ and every injective $G$-equivariant uniformly continuous module homomorphism $τ\colon Σ\to B^G$, a subshift $Δ\subset Σ$ is of finite type, resp. sofic, if and only if so is the image $τ(Δ)$. Generaliza…
This paper studies several aspects of symbolic factors of $\mathcal{S}$-adic subshifts of finite alphabet rank. First, we address a problem raised in [DDPM20] about the topological rank of symbolic factors of $\mathcal{S}$-adic subshifts and prove that this rank is at most the one of the extension system, improving results from [E20] and [GH2020]. As a consequence of our methods, we prove that finite topological rank systems are coalescent. Second, we investigate the structure of fibers $π^{-1}(y)$ of factor maps $π\colon(X,T)\to(Y,T)$ between minimal $\mathcal{S}$-adic subshifts of finite alp…
In this note we show that for any subshift $X$ of finite $S$-rank every invariant measure $μ$ is determined by its values on finitely many cylinders. Under mild conditions these cylinders are given by the letters of the alphabet in question.
We construct a family of ergodic measures on random substitution subshifts (RS-subshifts) associated to a primitive random substitution. In particular, the word frequencies of every finite legal word exist for almost every element of the random substitution subshift with respect to these measures. As an application, we show that for a certain class of random substitutions the measures of maximal entropy are frequency measures.
Let $G$ be a group and let $V$ be an algebraic group over an algebraically closed field. We introduce algebraic group subshifts $Σ\subset V^G$ which generalize both the class of algebraic sofic subshifts of $V^G$ and the class of closed group subshifts over finite group alphabets. When $G$ is a polycyclic-by-finite group, we show that $V^G$ satisfies the descending chain condition and that the notion of algebraic group subshifts, the notion of algebraic group sofic subshifts, and that of algebraic group subshifts of finite type are all equivalent. Thus, we obtain extensions of well-known resul…
A recent result of Downarowicz and Serafin (DS) shows that there exist positive entropy subshifts satisfying the assertion of Sarnak's conjecture. More precisely, it is proved that if $y=(y_n)_{n\ge 1}$ is a bounded sequence with zero average along every infinite arithmetic progression (the Möbius function is an example of such a \sq\ $y$) then for every $N\ge 2$ there exists a subshift $Σ$ over $N$ symbols, with entropy arbitrarily close to $\log N$, uncorrelated to $y$. In the present note, we improve the result of (DS). First of all, we observe that the uncorrelation obtained in (DS) is \em…
A theorem of Gao, Jackson and Seward, originally conjectured to be false by Glasner and Uspenskij, asserts that every countable group admits a $2$-coloring. A direct consequence of this result is that every countable group has a strongly aperiodic subshift on the alphabet $\{0,1\}$. In this article, we use Lovász local lemma to first give a new simple proof of said theorem, and second to prove the existence of a $G$-effectively closed strongly aperiodic subshift for any finitely generated group $G$. We also study the problem of constructing subshifts which generalize a property of Sturmian seq…
At the turn of this century Durand, and Lagarias and Pleasants established that key features of minimal subshifts (and their higher-dimensional analogues) to be studied are linearly repetitive, repulsive and power free. Since then, generalisations and extensions of these features, namely $α$-repetitive, $α$-repulsive and $α$-finite ($α\geq 1$), have been introduced and studied. We establish the equivalence of $α$-repulsive and $α$-finite for general subshifts over finite alphabets. Further, we studied a family of aperiodic minimal subshifts stemming from Grigorchuk's infinite $2$-group $G$. In…
This paper presents a general and systematic discussion of various symbolic representations of iterated maps through subshifts. We give a unified model for all continuous maps on a metric space, by representing a map through a general subshift over usually an uncountable alphabet. It is shown that at most the second order representation is enough for a continuous map. In particular, it is shown that the dynamics of one-dimensional continuous maps to a great extent can be transformed to the study of subshift structure of a general symbolic dynamics system. By introducing distillations, partial …
We show that every subshift factor of a ($-β$)-shift is intrinsically ergodic, when $β\geq \frac{1+\sqrt{5}}{2}$ and the ($-β$)-expansion of $1$ is not periodic with odd period. Moreover, the unique measure of maximal entropy satisfies a certain Gibbs property. This is an application of the technique established by Climenhaga and Thompson to prove intrinsic ergodicity beyond specification. We also prove that there exists a subshift factor of a ($-β$)-shift which is not intrinsically ergodic in the cases other than the above.
We study the class of word-building games, where two players pick letters from a finite alphabet to construct a finite or infinite word. The outcome is determined by whether the resulting word lies in a prescribed set (a win for player $A$) or not (a win for player $B$). We focus on symbolic dynamical games, where the target set is a subshift. We investigate the relation between the target subshift and the set of turn orders for which $A$ has a winning strategy.
We show that a synchronized coded system $X$ is intrinsically ergodic of full support if and only if $ h(Y)$, the topological entropy of $Y$, is less than $h(X) $ whenever $Y$ is a proper subsystem of $ X $. We also show that like systems with specification property, SVGL's the non-mixing extension of systems with specification property, are intrinsically ergodic of full support. Moreover, we compute the entropy of the underlying graph of the Fischer cover of a synchronized system.
We show the existence of a bounded Borel measurable saturated compensation function for a factor map between subshifts. As an application, we find the Hausdorff dimension and measures of full Hausdorff dimension for a compact invariant set of an expanding nonconformal map on the torus given by an integer-valued diagonal matrix. These problems were studied in [19] for a compact invariant set whose symbolic representation is a shift of finite type under the condition of the existence of a saturated compensation function. We extend the results by presenting a formula for the Hausdorff dimension f…
We consider the problem of when a symbolic dynamical system supports a Borel probability measure that is invariant under every element of its automorphism group. It follows readily from a classical result of Parry that the full shift on finitely many symbols, and more generally any mixing subshift of finite type, supports such a measure. Frisch and Tamuz recently dubbed such measures characteristic, and further showed that every zero entropy subshift has a characteristic measure. While it remains open if every subshift over a finite alphabet has a characteristic measure, we define a new class …
We generalize Brudno's theorem of $1$-dimensional shift dynamical system to $\mathbb{Z}^d$ (or $\mathbb{Z}_+^d$) subshifts. That is to say, in $\mathbb{Z}^d$ (or $\mathbb{Z}^d_+$) subshift, the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy is equivalent to the Kolmogorov complexity density almost everywhere for an ergodic shift-invariant measure.
We introduce subshifts of quasi-finite type as a generalization of the well-known subshifts of finite type. This generalization is much less rigid and therefore contains the symbolic dynamics of many non-uniform systems, e.g., piecewise monotonic maps of the interval with positive entropy. Yet many properties remain: existence of finitely many ergodic invariant probabilities of maximum entropy; lots of periodic points; meromorphic extension of the Artin-Mazur zeta function.
Let A be a finite alphabet and f: A^* --> A^* be a morphism with an iterative fixed point f^ω(α), where α is in A. Consider the subshift (X, T), where X is the shift orbit closure of f^ω(α) and T: X --> X is the shift map. Let S be a finite alphabet that is in bijective correspondence via a mapping c with the set of nonempty suffixes of the images f(a) for a in A. Let calS be a subset S^N be the set of infinite words s = (s_n)_{n\geq 0} such that π(s):= c(s_0)f(c(s_1)) f^2(c(s_2))... is in X. We show that if f is primitive and f(A) is a suffix code, then there exists a mapping H: calS --> calS…
We study the dynamics of a transformation that acts on infinite paths in the graph associated with Pascal's triangle. For each ergodic invariant measure the asymptotic law of the return time to cylinders is given by a step function. We construct a representation of the system by a subshift on a two-symbol alphabet and then prove that the complexity function of this subshift is asymptotic to a cubic, the frequencies of occurrence of blocks behave in a regular manner, and the subshift is topologically weak mixing.
In this paper, we describe the relationship between the Perron root and eigenvectors of an irreducible subshift of finite type with the correlation between the forbidden words in the subshift. In particular, we derive an expression for the Perron eigenvectors of the associated adjacency matrix. As an application, we obtain the Perron eigenvectors for irreducible $(0,1)$ matrices which are adjacency matrices for directed graphs. Moreover, we derive an alternate definition of the Parry measure in ergodic theory on an irreducible subshift of finite type.
In the present paper, we use the generalized multifractal framework introduced by Olsen to study the Bowen entropy and packing entropy of historic sets with typical weights over aperiodic and irreducible shifts of finite type. Following those results and a transfer from almost everywhere to everywhere, we show that for each point $ω$ in a irreducible shift of finite type $Σ_A$, the Bowen entropy of the set consisting of all the points that are mean Li-Yorke pairs with $ω$ is $0$, and its packing entropy is full. This result is beyond the ergodic theory. Also, by the transfer from almost everyw…
Consider a Hölder continuous potential $ϕ$ defined on the full shift $A^\nn$, where $A$ is a finite alphabet. Let $X\subset A^\nn$ be a specified sofic subshift. It is well-known that there is a unique Gibbs measure $μ_ϕ$ on $X$ associated to $ϕ$. Besides, there is a natural nested sequence of subshifts of finite type $(X_m)$ converging to the sofic subshift $X$. To this sequence we can associate a sequence of Gibbs measures $(μ_ϕ^m)$. In this paper, we prove that these measures weakly converge at exponential speed to $μ_ϕ$ (in the classical distance metrizing weak topology). We also establish…
We give sufficient conditions for a shift space $(Σ,σ)$ to be intrinsically ergodic, along with sufficient conditions for every subshift factor of $Σ$ to be intrinsically ergodic. As an application, we show that every subshift factor of a $β$-shift is intrinsically ergodic, which answers an open question included in Mike Boyle's article "Open problems in symbolic dynamics". We obtain the same result for $S$-gap shifts, and describe an application of our conditions to more general coded systems. One novelty of our approach is the introduction of a new version of the specification property that …
We show that the $\mathscr{B}$-free subshift $(S,X_{\mathscr{B}})$ associated to a $\mathscr{B}$-free system is intrinsically ergodic, i.e.\ it has exactly one measure of maximal entropy. Moreover, we study invariant measures for such systems. It is proved that each ergodic invariant measure is of joining type, determined by a joining of the Mirsky measure of a $\mathscr{B}'$-free subshift contained in $(S,X_{\mathscr{B}})$ and an ergodic invariant measure of the full shift on $\{0,1\}^{\mathbb{Z}}$. Moreover, each ergodic joining type measure yields a measure-theoretic dynamical system with i…
Given an irreducible subshift of finite type X, a subshift Y, a factor map π: X \to Y, and an ergodic invariant measure νon Y, there can exist more than one ergodic measure on X which projects to νand has maximal entropy among all measures in the fiber, but there is an explicit bound on the number of such maximal entropy preimages.
Using results relating the complexity of a two dimensional subshift to its periodicity, we obtain an application to the well-known conjecture of Furstenberg on a Borel probability measure on $[0,1)$ which is invariant under both $x\mapsto px \pmod 1$ and $x\mapsto qx \pmod 1$, showing that any potential counterexample has a nontrivial lower bound on its complexity.
Let $σ:\boldsymbolΣ\to\boldsymbolΣ$ be the left shift acting on $ \boldsymbolΣ $, a one-sided Markov subshift on a countable alphabet. Our intention is to guarantee the existence of $σ$-invariant Borel probabilities that maximize the integral of a given locally Hölder continuous potential $ A : \boldsymbolΣ \to \mathbb R $. Under certain conditions, we are able to show not only that $A$-maximizing probabilities do exist, but also that they are characterized by the fact their support lies actually in a particular Markov subshift on a finite alphabet. To that end, we make use of objects dual to …
Ergodic optimization aims to single out dynamically invariant Borel probability measures which maximize the integral of a given "performance" function. For a continuous self-map of a compact metric space and a dense set of continuous performance functions, we show that the existence of uncountably many ergodic maximizing measures. We also show that, for a topologically mixing subshift of finite type and a dense set of continuous functions there exist uncountably many ergodic maximizing measures which are fully supported and have positive entropy.
We define a random walk adic transformation associated to an aperiodic random walk on $G=\mathbb{Z}^{k}\times\mathbb{R}^{D-k}$ driven by a $β$-transformation and study its ergodic properties. In particular, this transformation is conservative, ergodic, infinite measure preserving and we prove that it is asymptotically distributionally stable and bounded rationally ergodic. Related earlier work appears in [AS] and [ANSS] for random walk adic transformations associated to an aperiodic random walk driven by a subshift of finite type.
Consider a subshift over a finite alphabet, $X\subset Λ^{\mathbb Z}$ (or $X\subsetΛ^{\mathbb N_0}$). With each finite block $B\inΛ^k$ appearing in $X$ we associate the empirical measure ascribing to every block $C\inΛ^l$ the frequency of occurrences of $C$ in $B$. By comparing the values ascribed to blocks $C$ we define a metric on the combined space of blocks $B$ and probability measures $μ$ on $X$, whose restriction to the space of measures is compatible with the weak-$\star$ topology. Next, in this combined metric space we fix an open set $\mathcal U$ containing all ergodic measures, and we…
We study ergodic Schrödinger operators defined over product dynamical systems in which one factor is periodic and the other factor is either a subshift over a finite alphabet or an irrational rotation of the circle. In the case in which one factor is a Boshernitzan subshift, we prove that either the resulting operators are periodic or the resulting spectra must be Cantor sets. The main ingredient is a suitable stability result for Boshernitzan's criterion under taking products. We also discuss the stability of purely singular continuous spectrum, which, given the zero-measure spectrum result, …
We prove that every topologically transitive shift of finite type in one dimension is topologically conjugate to a subshift arising from a primitive random substitution on a finite alphabet. As a result, we show that the set of values of topological entropy which can be attained by random substitution subshifts contains all Perron numbers and so is dense in the positive real numbers. We also provide an independent proof of this density statement using elementary methods.
We show that effective $2\ell$-multiple correlations imply quantitative $\ell$-multiple pointwise ergodic theorems. The result has a wide class of applications which include subgroup actions on homogeneous spaces, ergodic nilmanifold automorphisms, subshifts of finite type and Young towers.
For a subshift over a finite alphabet, a measure of the complexity of the system is obtained by counting the number of nonempty cylinder sets of length $n$. When this complexity grows exponentially, the automorphism group has been shown to be large for various classes of subshifts. In contrast, we show that subquadratic growth of the complexity implies that for a topologically transitive shift $X$, the automorphism group $\Aut(X)$ is small: if $H$ is the subgroup of $\Aut(X)$ generated by the shift, then $\Aut(X)/H$ is periodic.
A d-dimensional configuration c : Z^d -> A is a coloring of the d-dimensional infinite grid by elements of a finite alphabet A \subseteq Z. The configuration c has an annihilator if a non-trivial linear combination of finitely many translations of c is the zero configuration. Writing c as a d-variate formal power series, the annihilator is conveniently expressed as a d-variate Laurent polynomial f whose formal product with c is the zero power series. More generally, if the formal product is a strongly periodic configuration, we call the polynomial f a periodizer of c. A common annihilator (per…
