Ergodicity of Rokhlin cocycles

We develop a general study of ergodic properties of extensions of measure preserving dynamical systems. These extensions are given by cocycles (called here Rokhlin cocycles) taking values in the group of automorphisms of a measure space which represents the fibers. We use two different approaches in order to study ergodic properties of such extensions. The first approach is based on properties of mildly mixing group actions and the notion of complementary algebra. The second approach is based on spectral theory of unitary representations of locally compact Abelian groups and the theory of cocycles taking values in such groups. Finally, we examine the structure of self-joinings of extensions. We partially answer a question of Rudolph on lifting mixing (and multiple mixing) property to extensions and answer negatively a question of Robinson on lifting Bernoulli property. We also shed new light on some earlier results of Glasner and Weiss on the class of automorphisms disjoint from all weakly mixing transformations. Answering a question asked by Thouvenot we establish a relative version of the Foiaş—Stratila theorem on Gaussian—Kronecker dynamical systems. Research partially supported by KBN grant 2 P03A 002 14 (1998).