On the mean square of the remainder for the euclidean lattice point counting problem

We study an invariant of dynamical systems called naive entropy, which is defined for both measurable and topological actions of any countable group. We focus on nonamenable groups, in which case the invariant is two-valued, with every system having naive entropy either zero or infinity. Bowen has conjectured that when the acting group is sofic, zero naive entropy implies sofic entropy at most zero for both types of systems. We prove the topological version of this conjecture by showing that for every action of a sofic group by homeomorphisms of a compact metric space, zero naive entropy implies sofic entropy at most zero. This result and the simple definition of naive entropy allow us to show that the generic action of a free group on the Cantor set has sofic entropy at most zero. We observe that a distal Γ-system has zero naive entropy in both senses, if Γ has an element of infinite order. We also show that the naive entropy of a topological system is greater than or equal to the naive measure entropy of the same system with respect to any invariant measure.     

On sofic actions and equivalence relations

The notion of sofic equivalence relation was introduced by Gabor Elek and Gabor Lippner. Their technics employ some graph theory. Here we define this notion in a more operator algebraic context, starting from Connes? Embedding Problem, and prove the equivalence of these two definitions. We introduce a notion of sofic action for an arbitrary group and prove that an amalgamated product of sofic actions over amenable groups is again sofic. We also prove that an amalgamated product of sofic groups over an amenable subgroup is again sofic.     

Subsystem entropy for ? sofic shifts

We prove that any ?^d shift of finite type with positive topological entropy has a family of subsystems of finite type whose entropies are dense in the interval from zero to the entropy of the original shift. We show a similar result for ?^d sofic shifts, and also show every ?^d sofic shift can be covered by a ?^d shift of finite type arbitrarily close in entropy.     

Entropy theory for sofic groupoids I: The foundations

This is the first part in a series in which sofic entropy theory is generalized to class-bijective extensions of sofic groupoids. Here we define topological and measure entropy and prove invariance. We also establish the variational principle, compute the entropy of Bernoulli shift actions and answer a question of Benjy Weiss pertaining to the isomorphism problem for non-free Bernoulli shifts. The proofs are independent of previous literature.     

On sofic groupoids and their full groups

We prove that the class of sofic groupoids is stable under several measure-theoretic constructions. In particular, we show that virtually sofic groupoids are sofic. We answer a question of Conley, Kechris, and Tucker-Drob by proving that an aperiodic pmp groupoid is sofic if and only if its full group is metrically sofic.     

On sofic monoids

We investigate a notion of soficity for monoids. A group is sofic as a group if and only if it is sofic as a monoid. All finite monoids, all commutative monoids, all free monoids, all cancellative one-sided amenable monoids, all multiplicative monoids of matrices over a field, and all monoids obtained by adjoining an identity element to a semigroup are sofic. On the other hand, although the question of the existence of a non-sofic group remains open, we prove that the bicyclic monoid is not sofic. This shows that there exist finitely presented amenable inverse monoids that are non-sofic.     

Non-nesting actions of Polish groups on real trees

We prove that if a Polish group G with a comeagre conjugacy class has a non-nesting action on an R-tree, then every element of G fixes a point.     

Algébricité des partitions markoviennes des automorphismes hyperboliques du tore

We prove that, to every Markov partition for a hyperbolic automorphism of the torus, one can associate an algebraic sofic coding similar to the one constructed in [6].     

Fuglede–Kadison Determinants and Sofic Entropy

We relate Fuglede–Kadison determinants to entropy of finitely-presented algebraic actions in essentially complete generality. We show that if \({f\in M_{m,n}(\mathbb{Z}(\Gamma))}\) is injective as a left multiplication operator on \({\ell^{2}(\Gamma)^{\oplus n},}\) then the topological entropy of the action of \({\Gamma}\) on the dual of \({\mathbb{Z}(\Gamma)^{\oplus n}/\mathbb{Z}(\Gamma)^{\oplus m}f}\) is at most the logarithm of the positive Fuglede–Kadison determinant of f, with equality if m = n. We also prove that when m = n the measure-theoretic entropy of the action of \({\Gamma}\) on the dual of \({\mathbb{Z}(\Gamma)^{\oplus n}/\mathbb{Z}(\Gamma)^{\oplus n}f}\) is the logarithm of the Fuglede–Kadison determinant of f. This work completely settles the connection between entropy of principal algebraic actions and Fuglede–Kadison determinants in the generality in which dynamical entropy is defined. Our main Theorem partially generalizes results of Li-Thom from amenable groups to sofic groups. Moreover, we show that the obvious full generalization of the Li-Thom theorem for amenable groups is false for general sofic groups. Lastly, we undertake a study of when the Yuzvinskiǐ addition formula fails for a non-amenable sofic group \({\Gamma}\), showing it always fails if \({\Gamma}\) contains a nonabelian free group, and relating it to the possible values of L ²-torsion in general.     

Sofic groups and diophantine approximation

We prove the algebraic eigenvalue conjecture of J. Dodziuk, P. Linnell, V. Mathai, T. Schick, and S. Yates (see [2]) for sofic groups. Moreover, we give restrictions on the spectral measure of elements in the integral group ring. Finally, we define integer operators and prove a quantization of the operator norm below 2. To the knowledge of the author, there is no group known that is not sofic. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Sofic systems

A symbolic flow is called a sofic system if it is a homomorphic image (factor) of a subshift of finite type. We show that every sofic system can be realized as a finite-to-one factor of a subshift of finite type with the same entropy. From this it follows that sofic systems share many properties with subshifts of finite type. We concentrate especially on the properties of TPPD (transitive with periodic points dense) sofic systems.     

A dynamical systems approach to the Kadison-Singer problem

In these notes we develop a link between the Kadison-Singer problem and questions about certain dynamical systems. We conjecture that whether or not a given state has a unique extension is related to certain dynamical properties of the state. We prove that if any state corresponding to a minimal idempotent point extends uniquely to the von Neumann algebra of the group, then every state extends uniquely to the von Neumann algebra of the group. We prove that if any state arising in the Kadison-Singer problem has a unique extension, then the injective envelope of a C*-crossed product algebra associated with the state necessarily contains the full von Neumann algebra of the group. We prove that this latter property holds for states arising from rare ultrafilters and δ-stable ultrafilters, independent, of the group action and also for states corresponding to non-recurrent points in the corona of the group.     

Embeddings in finitely presented groups which preserve the center

V.N. Remeslennikov proposed in 1976 the following problem: is any countable abelian group a subgroup of the center of some finitely presented group? We prove that every finitely generated recursively presented group G is embeddable in a finitely presented group K such that the center of G coincide with that of K. We prove also that there exists a finitely presented group H with soluble word problem such that every countable abelian group is embeddable in the center of H. This gives a strong positive answer to the question raised by V.N. Remeslennikov.     

Local variational principle concerning entropy of a sofic group action

Recently Lewis Bowen introduced a notion of entropy for measure-preserving actions of countable sofic groups admitting a generating measurable partition with finite entropy; and then David Kerr and Hanfeng Li developed an operator-algebraic approach to actions of countable sofic groups not only on a standard probability space but also on a compact metric space, and established the global variational principle concerning measure-theoretic and topological entropy in this sofic context. By localizing these two kinds of entropy, in this paper we prove a local version of the global variational principle for any finite open cover of the space, and show that these local measure-theoretic and topological entropies coincide with their classical counterparts when the acting group is an infinite amenable group.     

Lifting covers of sofic shifts

We define a class of factor maps between sofic shifts, called lifting maps, which generalize the closing maps. We show that an irreducible sofic shiftS has only finitely manyS-conjugacy classes of minimal left (or right) lifting covers. The number of these classes is a computable conjugacy invariant ofS. Furthermore, every left lifting cover factors through a minimal left lifting cover.     

On the stability of the weak Pinsker property

We say that a dynamical system has the weak Pinsker property when it possesses decreasing factors of arbitrarily small entropy such that every one of these factors splits off with a Bernoulli complement. We prove here that this property is stable under the taking of factors and ofd d limits.     

Harmonic models and spanning forests of residually finite groups

We prove a number of identities relating the sofic entropy of a certain class of non-expansive algebraic dynamical systems, the sofic entropy of the Wired Spanning Forest and the tree entropy of Cayley graphs of residually finite groups. We also show that homoclinic points and periodic points in harmonic models are dense under general conditions.     

Finite groups whose maximal subgroups have the hall property

We study the structure of finite groups whosemaximal subgroups have the Hall property. We prove that such a group G has at most one non-Abelian composition factor, the solvable radical S(G) admits a Sylow series, the action of G on sections of this series is irreducible, the series is invariant with respect to this action, and the quotient group G/S(G) is either trivial or isomorphic to PSL₂(7), PSL₂(11), or PSL₅(2). As a corollary, we show that every maximal subgroup of G is complemented.     

Hyperlinearity,essentially free actions and <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis><Superscript>2</Superscript>-invariants. The sofic property

We prove that Connes Embedding Conjecture holds for the von Neumann algebras of sofic groups, that is sofic groups are hyperlinear. Hence we provide some new examples of hyperlinearity. We also show that the Determinant Conjecture holds for sofic groups as well. We introduce the notion of essentially free actions and amenable actions and study their properties.Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 43A07, 55N25