We investigate the connection between the abelian rank of a countable amenable group and the existence of good averaging sequences (e.g. for the pointwise ergodic theorem). We show that if $G$ is a group of abelian rank $r(G)$ then any Tempel'man sequence must have constant at least $2^{r(G)}$ and if $G$ is abelian this constant is achieved. On the other hand, infinite rank excludes the existence of Tempel'man sequences and forces all tempered sequences to grow super-exponentially.
We introduce two notions of algebraic entropy for actions of cancellative right amenable semigroups $S$ on discrete abelian groups $A$ by endomorphisms; these extend the classical algebraic entropy for endomorphisms of abelian groups, corresponding to the case $S=\mathbb N$. We investigate the fundamental properties of the algebraic entropy and compute it in several examples, paying special attention to the case when S is an amenable group. For actions of cancellative right amenable monoids on torsion abelian groups, we prove the so called Addition Theorem. In the same setting, we see that a B…
Jin proved that whenever $A$ and $B$ are sets of positive upper density in $\Z$, $A+B$ is piecewise syndetic. Jin's theorem was subsequently generalized by Jin and Keisler to a certain family of abelian groups, which in particular contains $\Z^d$. Answering a question of Jin and Keisler, we show that this result can be extended to countable amenable groups. Moreover we establish that such sumsets (or -- depending on the notation -- "productsets") are piecewise Bohr, a result which for $G=\Z$ was proved by Bergelson, Furstenberg and Weiss. In the case of an abelian group $G$, we show that a set…
In this paper we show that for every congruent monotileable amenable group $G$ and for every metrizable Choquet simplex $K$, there exists a minimal $G$-subshift, which is free on a full measure set, whose set of invariant probability measures is affine homeomorphic to $K$. If the group is virtually abelian, the subshift is free. Congruent monotileable amenable groups are a generalization of amenable residually finite groups. In particular, we show that this class contains all the infinite countable virtually nilpotent groups. This article is a generalization to congruent monotileable amenable …
The weak mean equicontinuous properties for a countable discrete amenable group $G$ acting continuously on a compact metrizable space $X$ are studied. It is shown that the weak mean equicontinuity of $(X \times X,G)$ is equivalent to the mean equicontinuity of $(X,G)$. Moreover, when $(X,G)$ has full measure center or $G$ is abelian, it is shown that $(X,G)$ is weak mean equicontinuous if and only if all points in $X$ are uniquely ergodic points and the map $x \to μ_x^G$ is continuous, where $μ_x^G$ is the unique ergodic measure on $\{\ol{Orb(x)}, G\}$.
We prove that a wreath product of an abelian group and a non-amenable group is not strongly Ulam stable. Previously this was known for groups containing free subgroups, due to work of Burger, Ozawa and Thom, and for some surface groups, due to work by Kazhdan. We also show that these wreath products are not deformation rigid.
Consider a countable amenable group acting by homeomorphisms on a compact metrizable space. Chung and Li asked if expansiveness and positive entropy of the action imply existence of an off-diagonal asymptotic pair. For algebraic actions of polycyclic-by-finite groups, Chung and Li proved it does. We provide examples showing that Chung and Li's result is near-optimal in the sense that the conclusion fails for some non-algebraic action generated by a single homeomorphism, and for some algebraic actions of non-finitely generated abelian groups. On the other hand, we prove that every expansive act…
The notion of topological entropy is originally defined for a single action. Later it was extended by Kieffer for arbitrary discrete amenable groups. Recently Friedland defined topological entropy for any discrete group actions amenable or not. Lind, Schmidt and Ward extended Yuzvinskii's addition formula from single action to abelian group actions. A result of Ward and Zhang suggests that such extension might be possible in the amenable case. In this paper we prove that the addition formula can not be extended for groups of finite type with nonzero Euler-characteristcs e.g. for free groups or…
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.
We prove a ratio ergodic theorem for amenable equivalence relations satisfying a strong form of the Besicovich covering property. We then use this result to study general non-singular actions of non-abelian free groups and establish a ratio ergodic theorem for averages along horospheres.
The aim of this paper is to study growth properties of group extensions of hyperbolic dynamical systems, where we do not assume that the extension satisfies the symmetry conditions seen, for example, in the work of Stadlbauer on symmetric group extensions and of the authors on geodesic flows. Our main application is to growth rates of periodic orbits for covers of an Anosov flow: we reduce the problem of counting periodic orbits in an amenable cover $X$ to counting in a maximal abelian subcover $X^{\mathrm{ab}}$. In this way, we obtain an equivalence for the Gurevič entropy: $h(X)=h(X^{\mathrm…
We introduce a new isomorphism-invariant notion of entropy for measure preserving actions of arbitrary countable groups on probability spaces, which we call orbital Rokhlin entropy. It employs Danilenko's orbital approach to entropy of a partition, and is motivated by Seward's recent generalization of Rokhlin entropy from amenable to general groups. A key ingredient in our approach is the use of an auxiliary probability-measure-preserving hyperfinite equivalence relation. Under the assumption of ergodicity of the auxiliary equivalence relation, our main result is a Shannon-McMillan-Breiman poi…
We show that any stationary symmteric $α$-stable ($SαS$) random field indexed by a countable amenable group $G$ is weakly mixing if and only if it is generated by a null action, extending works of Samorodnitsky and Wang-Roy-Stoev for abelian groups to all amenable groups. This enables us to improve significantly the domain of a recently discovered connection to von Neumann algebras. We also establish ergodicity of stationary $SαS$ fields associated with boundary and double boundary actions of a hyperbolic group $G$, where the boundary is equipped with either the Patterson-Sullivan or the hitti…
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…
Grigorchuk and Medynets recently announced that the topological full group of a minimal Cantor Z-action is amenable. They asked whether the statement holds for all minimal Cantor actions of general amenable groups as well. We answer in the negative by producing a minimal Cantor Z^2-action for which the topological full group contains a non-abelian free group.
The von Neumann-Day problem asks whether every non-amenable group contains a non-abelian free group. It was answered in the negative by Ol'shanskii in the 1980s. The measurable version (formulated by Gaboriau-Lyons) asks whether every non-amenable measured equivalence relation contains a non-amenable treeable subequivalence relation. This paper obtains a positive answer in the case of arbitrary Bernoulli shifts over a non-amenable group, extending work of Gaboriau-Lyons. The proof uses an approximation to the random interlacement process by random multistep of geometrically-killed random walk …
We study conditions that will ensure that a crossed product of a C*-algebra by a discrete exact group is purely infinite (simple or non-simple). We are particularly interested in the case of a discrete non-amenable exact group acting on a commutative C*-algebra, where our sufficient conditions can be phrased in terms of paradoxicality of subsets of the spectrum of the abelian C*-algebra. As an application of our results we show that every discrete countable non-amenable exact group admits a free amenable minimal action on the Cantor set such that the corresponding crossed product C*-algebra is…
We study mean equicontinuous actions of locally compact $σ$-compact amenable groups on compact metric spaces. In this setting, we establish the equivalence of mean equicontinuity and topo-isomorphy to the maximal equicontinuous factor and provide a characterization of mean equicontinuity of an action via properties of its product. This characterization enables us to show the equivalence of mean equicontinuity and the weaker notion of Besicovitch-mean equicontinuity in fairly high generality, including actions of abelian groups as well as minimal actions of general groups. In the minimal case, …
If $G$ is a Polish group and $Γ$ is a countable group, denote by $\Hom(Γ, G)$ the space of all homomorphisms $Γ\to G$. We study properties of the group $\cl{π(Γ)}$ for the generic $π\in \Hom(Γ, G)$, when $Γ$ is abelian and $G$ is one of the following three groups: the unitary group of an infinite-dimensional Hilbert space, the automorphism group of a standard probability space, and the isometry group of the Urysohn metric space. Under mild assumptions on $Γ$, we prove that in the first case, there is (up to isomorphism of topological groups) a unique generic $\cl{π(Γ)}$; in the other two, we s…
We study the existence of minimal dynamical systems, their orbit and minimal orbit-breaking equivalence relations, and their applications to C*-algebras and K-theory. We show that given any finite CW-complex there exists a space with the same K-theory and cohomology that admits a minimal homeomorphism. The proof relies on the existence of homeomorphisms on point-like spaces constructed by the authors in previous work, together with existence results for skew product systems due to Glasner and Weiss. To any minimal dynamical system one can associate minimal equivalence relations by breaking orb…
Associated to any orthogonal representation of a countable discrete group is an probability measure-preserving action called the Gaussian action. Using the Polish model formalism we developed before, we compute the entropy (in the sense of Bowen, Kerr-Li) of Gaussian actions when the group is sofic. Computations of entropy for Gaussian actions has only been done when the acting group is abelian and thus our results are new even in the amenable case. Fundamental to our approach are methods of noncommutative harmonic analysis and $C^{*}$-algebras which replace the Fourier analysis used in the ab…
We introduce an invariant, called mean rank, for any module M of the integral group ring of a discrete amenable group $Γ$, as an analogue of the rank of an abelian group. It is shown that the mean dimension of the induced $Γ$-action on the Pontryagin dual of M, the mean rank of M, and the von Neumann-Lück rank of M all coincide. As applications, we establish an addition formula for mean dimension of algebraic actions, prove the analogue of the Pontryagin-Schnirelmnn theorem for algebraic actions, and show that for elementary amenable groups with an upper bound on the orders of finite subgroups…
