Abelian pro‐countable groups and non‐Borel orbit equivalence relations

We study topological groups that can be defined as Polish, pro‐countable abelian groups, as non‐archimedean abelian groups or as quasi‐countable abelian groups, i.e., Polish subdirect products of countable, discrete groups, endowed with the product topology. We characterize tame groups in this class, i.e., groups all of whose continuous actions on a Polish space induce a Borel orbit equivalence relation, and relatively tame groups, i.e., groups all of whose diagonal actions induce a Borel orbit equivalence relation, provided that are continuous actions inducing Borel orbit equivalence relations.     

Superrigidity and countable Borel equivalence relations

We formulate a Borel version of a corollary of Furman's superrigidity theorem for orbit equivalence and present a number of applications to the theory of countable Borel equivalence relations. In particular, we prove that the orbit equivalence relations arising from the natural actions of on the projective planes over the various p-adic fields are pairwise incomparable with respect to Borel reducibility.     

On the classification problem of free ergodic actions of nonamenable groups

We show that, for any countable discrete nonamenable group Γ, the relations of conjugacy, orbit equivalence, stable orbit equivalence, von Neumann equivalence, and stable von Neumann equivalence of free ergodic pmp actions of Γ on the standard atomless probability space are not Borel. This answers a question of Kechris.     

A converse to Dye's theorem

Every non-amenable countable group induces orbit inequivalent ergodic equivalence relations on standard Borel probability spaces. Not every free, ergodic, measure preserving action of on a standard Borel probability space is orbit equivalent to an action of a countable group on an inverse limit of finite spaces. There is a treeable non-hyperfinite Borel equivalence relation which is not universal for treeable in the ordering.

     

The completeness of the isomorphism relation for countable Boolean algebras

We show that the isomorphism relation for countable Boolean algebras is Borel complete, i.e., the isomorphism relation for arbitrary countable structures is Borel reducible to that for countable Boolean algebras. This implies that Ketonen's classification of countable Boolean algebras is optimal in the sense that the kind of objects used for the complete invariants cannot be improved in an essential way. We also give a stronger form of the Vaught conjecture for Boolean algebras which states that, for any complete first-order theory of Boolean algebras that has more than one countable model up to isomorphism, the class of countable models for the theory is Borel complete. The results are applied to settle many other classification problems related to countable Boolean algebras and separable Boolean spaces. In particular, we will show that the following equivalence relations are Borel complete: the translation equivalence between closed subsets of the Cantor space, the isomorphism relation between ideals of the countable atomless Boolean algebra, the conjugacy equivalence of the autohomeomorphisms of the Cantor space, etc. Another corollary of our results is the Borel completeness of the commutative AF -algebras, which in turn gives rise to similar results for Bratteli diagrams and dimension groups.

     

A Model-Theoretic Characterization of Countable Direct Sums of Finite Cyclic Groups #

We prove that an abelian group G is a countable direct sum of finite cyclic groups if and only if there exists a consistent existential theory Γ of abelian groups such that G is embeddable in every model of Γ.     

Selection theorems and treeability

We show that domains of non-trivial trees have members. Using this, we show that smooth treeable equivalence relations have Borel transversals, and essentially countable treeable equivalence relations have Borel complete countable sections. We show also that treeable equivalence relations which are ccc idealistic, measured, or generated by a Borel action of a Polish group have Borel complete countable sections.

     

Some applications of the Adams-Kechris technique

We analyze the technique used by Adams and Kechris (2000) to obtain their results about Borel reducibility of countable Borel equivalence relations. Using this technique, we show that every equivalence relation is Borel reducible to the Borel bi-reducibility of countable Borel equivalence relations. We also apply the technique to two other classes of essentially uncountable Borel equivalence relations and derive analogous results for the classification problem of Borel automorphisms.

     

Isomorphism of subshifts is a universal countable borel equivalence relation

We use the theory of Borel equivalence relations to analyze the equivalence relation of isomorphism among one-dimensional subshifts. We show that this equivalence relation is a universal countable Borel equivalence relation, so that it admits no definable complete invariants fundamentally simpler than the equivalence classes. We also see that the classification of higher dimensional subshifts up to isomorphism has the same complexity as for the one-dimensional case.     

Topologies on measured groupoids

If an analytic Borel group G has a quasiinvariant measure, it is known that G is actually a locally compact group with the original Borel structure being generated by the topology and the original measure being equivalent to Haar measure. In this paper a variation is given on the known proof which then extends to show that an analytic measured groupoid has a σ-compact, and also a locally compact, inessential reduction which is a topological groupoid. In the σ-compact case, it is proved that every “almost” homomorphism agrees a.e. with a (strict) homomorphism. Also, the topology is used to show that every measured groupoid has a complete countable section ¦7¦ and that every locally compact equivalence relation has a complete transversal ¦3¦. These are further used to show that some results of Feldman et al. ¦7¦ apply in general and that a locally compact groupoid with (continuous) Haar system has sufficiently many non-singular Borel G-sets provided that the orbit measures are atom-free ¦23¦.     

Stationary probability measures and topological realizations

We establish the generic inexistence of stationary Borel probability measures for aperiodic Borel actions of countable groups on Polish spaces. Using this, we show that every aperiodic continuous action of a countable group on a compact Polish space has an invariant Borel set on which it has no σ-compact realization.     

Localized cohomology and some applications of Popa’s cocycle superrigidity theorem

We prove that orbit equivalence of measure preserving ergodic a.e. free actions of a countable group with the relative property (T) is a complete analytic equivalence relation.     

Unitary equivalence of automorphisms of separable C*-algebras

We prove that the automorphisms of any separable C*-algebra that does not have continuous trace are not classifiable by countable structures up to unitary equivalence. This implies a dichotomy for the Borel complexity of the relation of unitary equivalence of automorphisms of a separable unital C*-algebra: Such relation is either smooth or not even classifiable by countable structures.     

Cardinal characteristics and countable Borel equivalence relations

Boykin and Jackson recently introduced a property of countable Borel equivalence relations called Borel boundedness, which they showed is closely related to the union problem for hyperfinite equivalence relations. In this paper, we introduce a family of properties of countable Borel equivalence relations which correspond to combinatorial cardinal characteristics of the continuum in the same way that Borel boundedness corresponds to the bounding number . We analyze some of the basic behavior of these properties, showing, e.g., that the property corresponding to the splitting number coincides with smoothness. We then settle many of the implication relationships between the properties; these relationships turn out to be closely related to (but not the same as) the Borel Tukey ordering on cardinal characteristics.     

Martin’s conjecture and strong ergodicity

In this paper, we explore some of the consequences of Martin’s Conjecture on degree invariant Borel maps. These include the strongest conceivable ergodicity result for the Turing equivalence relation with respect to the filter on the degrees generated by the cones, as well as the statement that the complexity of a weakly universal countable Borel equivalence relation always concentrates on a null set.     

Orbit equivalence rigidity for ergodic actions of the mapping class group

We establish orbit equivalence rigidity for any ergodic, essentially free and measure-preserving action on a standard Borel space with a finite positive measure of the mapping class group for a compact orientable surface with higher complexity. We prove similar rigidity results for a finite direct product of mapping class groups as well.      

Orthogonal measures and ergodicity

Burgess-Mauldin have proven the Ramsey-theoretic result that continuous sequences \({\left( {{\mu _c}} \right)_{c \in {2^\mathbb{N}}}}\) of pairwise orthogonal Borel probability measures admit continuous orthogonal subsequences. We establish an analogous result for sequences indexed by 2^N/E⁰, the next Borel cardinal. As a corollary, we obtain a strengthening of the Harrington-Kechris-Louveau E₀ dichotomy for restrictions of measure equivalence. We then use this to characterize the family of countable Borel equivalence relations which are non-hyperfinite with respect to an ergodic Borel probability measure which is not strongly ergodic.     

An entropy-preserving Dye’s theorem for ergodic actions

This work shows that equality of entropy for ergodic actions of a discrete amenable group is a restricted orbit equivalence in the formal sense defined inRestricted Orbit Equivalence for Actions of Discrete Amenable Groups by Kammeyer and Rudolph [3]. An element of the full-group of such an action encodes a countable partition. A natural extension of entropy to such countable partitions is shown to be a size in the sense of [3] and hence engenders and orbit equivalence relation on the space of all such actions. The major goal achieved here is to show that this relation is precisely equality of entropy.     

Characterizing subgroups of compact abelian groups

We prove that every countable subgroup of a compact metrizable abelian group has a characterizing set. As an application, we answer several questions on maximally almost periodic (MAP) groups and give a characterization of the class of (necessarily MAP) abelian topological groups whose Bohr topology has countable pseudocharacter.     

The Spectrum of Completely Positive Entropy Actions of Countable Amenable Groups

We prove that an ergodic free action of a countable discrete amenable group with completely positive entropy has a countable Lebesgue spectrum. Our approach is based on the Rudolph-Weiss result on the equality of conditional entropies for actions of countable amenable groups with the same orbits. Relative completely positive entropy actions are also considered. An application to the entropic properties of Gaussian actions of countable discrete abelian groups is given.