(1) Mathematics Department, Princeton University, Washington Road, Princeton, NJ 08544-1000, USA;(2) Landau Institute of Theoretical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2 Kosygin Street, 117334 Moscow, Russia
Abstract:
Interval exchange transformations (IETs) are piecewise isometries of the interval, obtained permuting a certain number of subintervals. We give a condition on IETs in the special subclass of IETs with periodic Rauzy-Veech cocycle which guarantees weak mixing, i.e. the continuity of the spectrum. The proof involves the study of the associated spectral measures. The condition can be checked explicitly by computing a certain Galois group of a field related to the Ravzy-Veech cocycle. Explicit examples of weakly mixing IETs are constructed in the Appendix. *Dedicated to the memory of F.A. Berezin