Topological realizations of families of ergodic automorphisms, multitowers and orbit equivalence

We study minimal topological realizations of families of ergodic measure preserving automorphisms (e.m.p.a.'s). Our main result is the following theorem. Theorem: Let {T_p:p∈I} be an arbitrary finite or countable collection of e.m.p.a.'s on nonatomic Lebesgue probability spaces (Y _p v _p ). Let S be a Cantor minimal system such that the cardinality of the set ε _S of all ergodic S-invariant Borel probability measures is at least the cardinality of I. Then for any collection {μ _p :pεI} of distinct measures from ε _S there is a Cantor minimal system S′ in the topological orbit equivalence class of S such that, as a measure preserving system, (S ¹,μ _p ) is isomorphic to T_p for every p∈I. Moreover, S′ can be chosen strongly orbit equivalent to S if and only if all finite topological factors of S are measure-theoretic factors of T_p for all p∈I. This result shows, in particular, that there are no restrictions at all for the topological realizations of countable families of e.m.p.a.'s in Cantor minimal systems. Namely, for any finite or countable collection {T ₁,T₂,…} of e.m.p.a.'s of nonatomic Lebesgue probability spaces, there is a Cantor minimal systemS, whose collection {μ1,μ2…} of ergodic Borel probability measures is in one-to-one correspondence with {T ₁,T₂,…}, and such that (S,μ _i ) is isomorphic toT _i for alli. Furthermore, since realizations are taking place within orbit equivalence classes of a given Cantor minimal system, our results generalize the strong orbit realization theorem and the orbit realization theorem of 18]. Those theorems are now special cases of our result where the collections {T _p}, {T _p }{μ _p } consist of just one element each. Research of I.K. was supported by NSF grant DMS 0140068.