Quasicrystals and Almost Periodicity

We give in this paper topological and dynamical characterizations of mathematical quasicrystals. Let denote the space of uniformly discrete subsets of the Euclidean space. Let denote the elements of that admit an autocorrelation measure. A Patterson set is an element of such that the Fourier transform of its autocorrelation measure is discrete. Patterson sets are mathematical idealizations of quasicrystals. We prove that S is a Patterson set if and only if S is almost periodic in (,), where denotes the Besicovitch topology. Let be an ergodic random element of . We prove that is almost surely a Patterson set if and only if the dynamical system has a discrete spectrum. As an illustration, we study deformed model sets.