Entropy, products, and bounded orbit equivalence

We prove that if two topologically free and entropy regular actions of countable sofic groups on compact metrizable spaces are continuously orbit equivalent, and each group either (i) contains a w-normal amenable subgroup which is neither locally finite nor virtually cyclic, or (ii) is a non-locally-finite product of two infinite groups, then the actions have the same sofic topological entropy. This fact is then used to show that if two free uniquely ergodic and entropy regular probability-measure-preserving actions of such groups are boundedly orbit equivalent then the actions have the same sofic measure entropy. Our arguments are based on a relativization of property SC to sofic approximations and yield more general entropy inequalities.

Non-uniform ergodic properties of Hamiltonian flows with impacts

The ergodic properties of two uncoupled oscillators, one horizontal and one vertical, residing in a class of non-rectangular star-shaped polygons with only vertical and horizontal boundaries and impacting elastically from its boundaries are studied. We prove that the iso-energy level sets topology changes non-trivially; the flow on level sets is always conjugated to a translation flow on a translation surface, yet, for some segments of partial energies the genus of the surface is strictly greater than $1$ . When at least one of the oscillators is unharmonic, or when both are harmonic and non-resonant, we prove that for almost all partial energies, including the impacting ones, the flow on level sets is uniquely ergodic. When both oscillators are harmonic and resonant, we prove that there exist intervals of partial energies on which periodic ribbons and additional ergodic components coexist. We prove that for almost all partial energies in such segments the motion is uniquely ergodic on the part of the level set that is not occupied by the periodic ribbons. This implies that ergodic averages project to piecewise smooth weighted averages in the configuration space.

AN APERIODIC TILE WITH EDGE-TO-EDGE ORIENTATIONAL MATCHING RULES

We present a single, connected tile which can tile the plane but only nonperiodically. The tile is hexagonal with edge markings, which impose simple rules as to how adjacent tiles are allowed to meet across edges. The first of these rules is a standard matching rule, that certain decorations match across edges. The second condition is a new type of matching rule, which allows tiles to meet only when certain decorations in a particular orientation are given the opposite charge. This forces the tiles to form a hierarchy of triangles, following a central idea of the Socolar–Taylor tilings. However, the new edge-to-edge orientational matching rule forces this structure in a very different way, which allows for a surprisingly simple proof of aperiodicity. We show that the hull of all tilings satisfying our rules is uniquely ergodic and that almost all tilings in the hull belong to a minimal core of tilings generated by substitution. Identifying tilings which are charge-flips of each other, these tilings are shown to have pure point dynamical spectrum and a regular model set structure.

Discrepancy properties and conjugacy classes of interval exchange transformations

Interval exchange transformations are typically uniquely ergodic maps and therefore have uniformly distributed orbits. Their degree of uniformity can be measured in terms of the star-discrepancy. Few examples of interval exchange transformations with low-discrepancy orbits are known so far and only for $$n=2,3$$ n = 2 , 3 intervals, there are criteria to completely characterize those interval exchange transformations. In this paper, it is shown that having low-discrepancy orbits is a conjugacy class invariant under composition of maps. To a certain extent, this approach allows us to distinguish interval exchange transformations with low-discrepancy orbits from those without. For $$n=4$$ n = 4 intervals, the classification is almost complete with the only exceptional case having monodromy invariant $$\rho = (4,3,2,1)$$ ρ = ( 4 , 3 , 2 , 1 ) . This particular monodromy invariant is discussed in detail.

Unique ergodicity of the automorphism group of the semigeneric directed graph

We prove that the automorphism group of the semigeneric directed graph (in the sense of Cherlin’s classification) is uniquely ergodic.

Rauzy induction of polygon partitions and toral $ \mathbb{Z}^2 $-rotations

<p style='text-indent:20px;'>We extend the notion of Rauzy induction of interval exchange transformations to the case of toral <inline-formula><tex-math id="M1">\begin{document}$ \mathbb{Z}^2 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>-rotation, i.e., <inline-formula><tex-math id="M2">\begin{document}$ \mathbb{Z}^2 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>-action defined by rotations on a 2-torus. If <inline-formula><tex-math id="M3">\begin{document}$ \mathscr{X}_{\mathscr{P}, R} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> denotes the symbolic dynamical system corresponding to a partition <inline-formula><tex-math id="M4">\begin{document}$ \mathscr{P} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M5">\begin{document}$ \mathbb{Z}^2 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>-action <inline-formula><tex-math id="M6">\begin{document}$ R $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> such that <inline-formula><tex-math id="M7">\begin{document}$ R $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> is Cartesian on a sub-domain <inline-formula><tex-math id="M8">\begin{document}$ W $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, we express the 2-dimensional configurations in <inline-formula><tex-math id="M9">\begin{document}$ \mathscr{X}_{\mathscr{P}, R} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> as the image under a <inline-formula><tex-math id="M10">\begin{document}$ 2 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>-dimensional morphism (up to a shift) of a configuration in <inline-formula><tex-math id="M11">\begin{document}$ \mathscr{X}_{\widehat{\mathscr{P}}|_W, \widehat{R}|_W} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> where <inline-formula><tex-math id="M12">\begin{document}$ \widehat{\mathscr{P}}|_W $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> is the induced partition and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M13">\begin{document}$ \widehat{R}|_W $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> is the induced <inline-formula><tex-math id="M14">\begin{document}$ \mathbb{Z}^2 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>-action on <inline-formula><tex-math id="M15">\begin{document}$ W $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>.</p><p style='text-indent:20px;'>We focus on one example, <inline-formula><tex-math id="M16">\begin{document}$ \mathscr{X}_{\mathscr{P}_0, R_0} $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, for which we obtain an eventually periodic sequence of 2-dimensional morphisms. We prove that it is the same as the substitutive structure of the minimal subshift <inline-formula><tex-math id="M17">\begin{document}$ X_0 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> of the Jeandel–Rao Wang shift computed in an earlier work by the author. As a consequence, <inline-formula><tex-math id="M18">\begin{document}$ {\mathscr{P}}_0 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> is a Markov partition for the associated toral <inline-formula><tex-math id="M19">\begin{document}$ \mathbb{Z}^2 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>-rotation <inline-formula><tex-math id="M20">\begin{document}$ R_0 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>. It also implies that the subshift <inline-formula><tex-math id="M21">\begin{document}$ X_0 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> is uniquely ergodic and is isomorphic to the toral <inline-formula><tex-math id="M22">\begin{document}$ \mathbb{Z}^2 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>-rotation <inline-formula><tex-math id="M23">\begin{document}$ R_0 $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> which can be seen as a generalization for 2-dimensional subshifts of the relation between Sturmian sequences and irrational rotations on a circle. Batteries included: the algorithms and code to reproduce the proofs are provided.</p>

Generic rotation sets

Let $(X,T)$ be a topological dynamical system. Given a continuous vector-valued function $F \in C(X, \mathbb {R}^{d})$ called a potential, we define its rotation set $R(F)$ as the set of integrals of F with respect to all T-invariant probability measures, which is a convex body of $\mathbb {R}^{d}$ . In this paper we study the geometry of rotation sets. We prove that if T is a non-uniquely ergodic topological dynamical system with a dense set of periodic measures, then the map $R(\cdot )$ is open with respect to the uniform topologies. As a consequence, we obtain that the rotation set of a generic potential is strictly convex and has $C^{1}$ boundary. Furthermore, we prove that the map $R(\cdot )$ is surjective, extending a result of Kucherenko and Wolf.

Uniform convergence rate for Birkhoff means of certain uniquely ergodic toral maps

We obtain estimates on the uniform convergence rate of the Birkhoff average of a continuous observable over torus translations and affine skew product toral transformations. The convergence rate depends explicitly on the modulus of continuity of the observable and on the arithmetic properties of the frequency defining the transformation. Furthermore, we show that for the one-dimensional torus translation, these estimates are nearly optimal.

A context in which finite or unique ergodicity is generic

We show that for good measures, the set of homeomorphisms of Cantor space which preserve that measure and which have no invariant clopen sets contains a residual set of homeomorphisms which are uniquely ergodic. Additionally, we show that for refinable Bernoulli trial measures, the same set of homeomorphisms contains a residual set of homeomorphisms which admit only finitely many ergodic measures.