Two common examples of ergodic measure-preserving systems, an irrational rotation of the circle with Lebesgue measure and the Bernoulli shift on with the
product measure are typical members of the classes of compact and weak mixing systems, respectively. Due to the theory developed in ERT8, ERT9 and ERT10, we consider these two classes as well understood. Can one hope to describe general mps in terms of such building blocks? The surprising answer to this question is that if one allows for the relative notions of compact and weak mixing to play the part of building blocks, then this is indeed the case. This vague statement is made precise in the Furstenberg-Zimmer structure theorem, which we intend to prove soon.
Let be a homomorphism, with
and
. The present and next two posts are devoted to the definitions and study of the notions of compact and weakly mixing extensions, by adapting the usual notions of compact and weak mixing mps to a “relative” or “conditional” setting. The ideas are essentially the same as in the absolute cases, the main new trick being not to work in the Hilbert space
over the complex numbers, but rather viewing the Hilbert space
as a direct integral of a Hilbert bundle over the von Neumann algebra
. Specifically, we consider the fiber Hilbert spaces
, where
is the disintegration associated to
, form the Hilbert bundle
over
and identify
with integrable sections of this Hilbert bundle. This will be properly explained in ERT16 (for weakly mixing extensions do not make use of such machinery).
As in the absolute case, there are two ways of defining relative notions of compactness and weak mixing. The first one, which I see as a qualitative one, is intrinsically more natural. As a matter of fact, once the two definitions are complementary, Furstenberg-Zimmer structure theorem basically follows from a transfinite induction. This definition relies on the analysis of generalized eigenfunctions.
On the other hand, to obtain Furstenberg multiple recurrence theorem, it is necessary a quantitative characterization of such objects. This is the other way of defining the concepts, in terms of ergodic averages and its expectations. See this post of Terry Tao for further details on this viewpoint.
In the present post, just like we did in the absolute case, we will define ergodicity and weak mixing from the quantitative viewpoint. This has two advantages: it is more concrete and demonstrates its usefulness for the purpose of multiple recurrence. ERT16 will describe the qualitative viewpoint. This will require the machinery of Hilbert bundles and generalized eigenfunctions. Then Furstenberg-Zimmer structure theorem will be established and, finally, for the purpose of multiple recurrence, we will show the two definitions are equivalent.
1. Ergodic extensions
Let and
a factor of
. We write
for the corresponding homomorphism and, when
is implicit, just
.
Definition 1
is an ergodic extension of
if the only
-invariant sets of
are images (modulo nulls sets) under
of
-invariant sets of
.
If we denote the trivial one-point mps by , then
is an extension of
. Clearly, saying that
is ergodic now becomes the assertion that
is an ergodic extension.
Ergodic extensions behave well under composition and restriction. Specifically, if , then
is ergodic if and only if
and
are both ergodic. This is straightforward, but for the purpose of completeness, I will give the proof.
Assume
is ergodic and let
be
-invariant (this means
and
satisfies
). By hypothesis,
, where
is
-invariant. Observe that
is invariant under
and so
is ergodic. Now, let
be
-invariant. Then
is
-invariant. By assumption, there is
invariant under
such that
Assume
and
are ergodic and let
be
-invariant. Then
for some
-invariant
. Then
, where
is
-invariant and so
.
Remember that induces a natural imbedding of
into
,
. It is evident
is ergodic if and only if every
-invariant function of
belongs to
, that is, iff
for any
-invariant
. By von Neummann’s theorem (see ERT1), the set of
-invariant functions in
is equal to
, where
We thus have an alternative definition for ergodic extensions.
Definition 2
is an ergodic extension of
if and only if
, for every
.
Observe that, as is continuous in the strong topology (see ERT14), it is enough to check the above equality in the weak topology.
Proposition 3 Let
be an ergodic extension and let
with
. Then
Proof: Note that and so the above expression makes sense. Firstly,
and so the lemma reduces to saying that converges in the weak topology to zero. Let
be a weak limit. Since
converges to zero in the strong topology,
and so, by ergodicity,
. Finally, as each
has null
-expectation,
a passage of the weak limit (see the exercise below) gives that and so
.
Exercise 1 Prove that
is continuous in the weak topology.
Although equations (1) and (2) are equivalent, the natural place to work with then is downstairs, in . This is corroborated when we write the equations in the inhomogeneous case, which is the content of the next result. Actually, it characterizes ergodicity.
Corollary 4 The extension
is ergodic if and only if, for every
, one has
Proof:
() Just apply the previous proposition to the functions
and
, noting that
and
() Let
be
-invariant. First assume that
. Equation (3) gives that
and so . If
is an arbitrary, the above argument implies that
.
2. Weakly mixing extensions
Given , remember from ERT14 that the relative product mps
is also an extension of
, via any of the compositions
or
(
and
are the natural projections).
Clearly, this extends Theorem 6 of ERT8: is a weakly mixing system iff
is a weakly mixing extension of
. Also, if
is ergodic, then
is ergodic, that is: every weakly mixing extension is ergodic. What we’ll do in the remaining of this post is to relativize the results of ERT8.
Lemma 6 Let
be a weakly mixing extension and let
. Then
Proof: The idea is to apply Lemma 3 to the extension . We divide the proof in two parts.
Part 1. : as
, we have
. Observing that
where in the last equality we used Proposition 14 of ERT14, Lemma 3 guarantees that
Part 2. is arbitrary: apply Part 1 to the functions
and
.
We now prove the relative version of Theorem 6 of ERT8.
Proposition 7 If
is weakly mixing and
ergodic, then
is ergodic.
Proof: Let ,
,
and
. We’ll check (3). As
generates a dense subset of
, assume without loss of generality that
. Due to the bilinearity in the functions
, we can divide the proof into two parts.
Part 1. : we want to check equation (3). Observe that
By Lemma 6, the sequence converges a Cesàro to zero, and so, as
is uniformly bounded, (2) is equivalent to
Now observe that
Then we want to prove that
and this follows from the ergodicity assumption on and Proposition 3, because
Part 2. are arbitrary. Let
and
. Then
By Part 1, (2) holds for and
. Finally, as
, we have
and in this case (2) is clearly valid. This concludes the proof.
Corollary 8 If
is weakly mixing, then
is weakly mixing.
Proof: The assumption gives in particular that is ergodic. Three successive applications of Proposition 7 give that
is ergodic and so is weakly mixing.
Previous posts: ERT0, ERT1, ERT2, ERT3, ERT4, ERT5, ERT6, ERT7, ERT8, ERT9, ERT10, ERT11, ERT12, ERT13, ERT14.
Leave a Reply