A tiling property for actions of amenable groups along Tempelman F{\o}lner sequences
Jonathan Boretsky, Jenna Zomback

TL;DR
This paper proves a tiling property for actions of amenable groups along Tempelman F{\
Contribution
It introduces a new combinatorial proof of the pointwise ergodic theorem for amenable groups using Tempelman F{\
Findings
Establishes a tiling property that implies the pointwise ergodic theorem.
Provides a short, combinatorial proof of the ergodic theorem for amenable groups.
Validates the tiling property for actions along Tempelman F{\
Abstract
We show that a certain tiling property (which directly implies the pointwise ergodic theorem) holds for pmp actions of amenable groups along increasing Tempelman F{\o}lner sequences, thus providing a short and combinatorial proof of the corresponding pointwise ergodic theorem.
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Taxonomy
TopicsMathematical Dynamics and Fractals · Advanced Operator Algebra Research · Advanced Topology and Set Theory
A tiling property for actions of amenable groups along Tempelman Følner sequences
Jonathan Boretsky
and
Jenna Zomback
Abstract.
We show that a certain tiling property (which directly implies the pointwise ergodic theorem) holds for pmp actions of amenable groups along increasing Tempelman Følner sequences, thus providing a short and combinatorial proof of the corresponding pointwise ergodic theorem.
The first author conducted research through the summer research USRA program at McGill University under the supervision of Marcin Sabok supported by NSERC Discovery Grant RGPIN 2015-03738.
1. Introduction
For a group acting on a probability space and a sequence of finite subsets of , the pointwise ergodic property for along says that the action of is ergodic if and only if for every function on , the integral (the global average) of over is equal to the limit of the averages of over (the pointwise average) for almost every . The classical ergodic theorem, due to G. D. Birkhoff in 1931 [Bir], says that probability measure preserving (pmp) actions of along the sequence have the pointwise ergodic property. In 2001, E. Lindenstrauss proved that actions of amenable groups along tempered Følner sequences have the pointwise ergodic property [Lin].
A. Tserunyan in [Tse] gives a short, combinatorial proof of the classical pointwise ergodic theorem (for ) by reducing it to showing that the following tiling property holds for pmp actions of along the intervals :
Definition 1** (Tiling Property).**
We say that a pmp action of a countable group on a standard probability space has the tiling property along a sequence of finite subsets of if for any pointwise increasing sequence of measurable functions , , and , there are arbitrarily large finite subsets such that for a set of points of measure at least , can be covered up to fraction by disjoint sets of the form (where and are treated as multisets if the action of is not free).
It is also implicit in [Tse] that the tiling property implies the pointwise ergodic theorem for any pmp group action (see Section 3 for a proof). This implication distills out the analytic part from the proofs of pointwise ergodic theorems, reducing them to combinatorial (finitary) tiling problems. Another proof of the ergodic theorem for revolving around the same idea was given in [Keane-Petersen:ergodic_thm].
In this paper, we prove that the tiling property holds for pmp actions of amenable groups along increasing Tempelman Følner sequences by finding Vitali covers with Følner tiles on multiple scales. As a consequence, we prove the corresponding pointwise ergodic theorem:
Theorem 2** (Pointwise ergodic).**
Fix a pmp action of an amenable group on a standard probability space and an increasing Tempelman Følner sequence . Then the action of on is ergodic if and only if for every ,
[TABLE]
where .
Although this is less general than Lindenstrauss’s theorem, our proof is shorter and offers the advantage that the methods used are more elementary and finitary.
Many people have shown this result for increasing Tempelman Følner sequences. The shortest proof of Theorem 2 that the authors are aware of is given in [OW], which uses a Vitali covering lemma along with basic functional analysis: a function is approximated by functions for which the ergodic theorem holds trivially, and the error is controlled by applying the Vitali covering lemma. Other proofs include [Eme] and [Tem], which also use a Vitali covering lemma along with analysis. However, none of these proofs yield the tiling property described above, and hence they do not take advantage of the abstract implication of the corresponding pointwise ergodic theorem.
A word on the proof of the tiling property
Compared to [Tse], the tiling property is much harder to establish for general increasing Tempelman Følner sequences. For example, tiling with boxes of different given sizes for each center is harder than tiling with intervals. The key idea in mitigating this difficulty is to iterate the Vitali covering lemma to find covers on multiple scales. We essentially zoom very far out, cover some constant fraction of the space with large sets (this fraction comes from the Tempelman condition and is independent of how far we’ve zoomed out), and then zoom in on the spots we miss, and fill those in as best we can with smaller sets, and so on and so forth. Since we cover a constant fraction on each scale, if we zoom out far enough at the beginning, once we zoom all the way back in, we will have covered nearly the whole space.
Organization
In Section 2, we provide the necessary definitions and notation that will be used throughout the paper. In Section 3, we give an explicit proof, due to Tserunyan, that Definition 1 implies the pointwise ergodic property for any pmp group action. In Section 4, we establish the tiling property for pmp actions of amenable groups along increasing Tempelman Følner sequences, which then directly implies the corresponding pointwise ergodic property.
Acknowledgements*.*
The authors would like to thank their advisors, Marcin Sabok and Anush Tserunyan, for their guidance, suggestions, and support. Many thanks as well to Benjamin Weiss for pointing out the proof of Theorem 2 given in [OW], and to Alexander Kechris for useful suggestions.
2. Definitions and notation
Let be a standard probability space, and a function . For a finite set , define the average of over , . For a finite equivalence relation on , define . Given a group and a finite set , define the -boundary of a set , denoted , to be the set of points for which and .
A sequence of finite subsets of is a Følner sequence if and for all finite sets . A group is called amenable if it admits a Følner sequence. For this paper, we will assume that our Følner sequences are increasing.
Given a Følner sequence , we say is tempered if there is some natural number such that for all ,
[TABLE]
and Tempelman if there is such that for all ,
[TABLE]
in the latter case, we’ll call the smallest such the Tempelman constant of . Note that any Tempelman Følner sequence is tempered.
Every amenable group has a tempered Følner sequence (in fact, every Følner sequence has a tempered subsequence). In [Lin]*Example 4.2, an example is given of an amenable group without a Tempelman Følner sequence. However, [Hoc]*Theorem 3.4 gives a sufficient condition for the existence of a Tempelman Følner sequence:
Theorem 3** (Hochman 2007).**
If for a countable, abelian, amenable group , we have
[TABLE]
then possesses at least one Tempelman Følner sequence.
3. The tiling property implies the pointwise ergodic theorem
The following result is implicitly stated in [Tse] and was explained by Tserunyan to the second author.
Theorem 4** (Tserunyan).**
Assume has the tiling property along a sequence of finite subsets . Then for any pmp action of on a standard probability space , the action of on is ergodic if and only if for every ,
[TABLE]
where .
Proof.
By replacing with , we may assume without loss of generality that . We will show that a.e., and an analogous argument shows a.e.
Since is -invariant, ergodicity implies that it is some constant almost everywhere. Assume by way of contradiction that . Define by the such that (equivalently, ).
Fix small enough so that for any measurable , implies , and let be large enough so that the set has measure at least .
The tiling property applied to the function with gives a finite such that , where is the set of all such that at least fraction of is partitioned into sets of the form .
Claim*.*
For each , .
Proof of Claim 1*.*
By the definition of , on a subset that occupies at least fraction of , the average of is positive, and hence that of is non-negative. On the remaining set , the function is at least , by the definition of . Thus, the average of on the entire is at least .
Now we compute using this claim and the invariance of :
[TABLE]
This gives a contradiction:
[TABLE]
4. The tiling property for increasing Tempelman Følner sequences
In this section, we prove the following:
Lemma 5**.**
The tiling property holds for pmp actions of amenable groups along increasing Tempelman Følner sequences.
As a corollary, by Theorem 4, we obtain Theorem 2. In order to prove this lemma, we need a Vitali covering lemma. For the rest of this section, fix an amenable group and Tempelman Følner sequence with Tempelman constant , standard probability space on which acts in a pmp way, and .
Lemma 6** (Vitali covering).**
Given a function and a finite subset , there exists a set , which is a disjoint union of sets of the form , , such that .
Proof.
Put , . We will inductively define increasing sets and for until . Assume . Let , and let be least such that and . Put and . Iterate this (up to times) until for some . Put and .
We claim that the selected are actually pairwise disjoint. If not, suppose that at the step there is some . Then . But since , there is some and such that . Hence , contradicting our choice of .
So at each step, we add exactly elements to and at most elements to . Hence, since . ∎
Now we may begin proving Lemma 5. The idea is to break our space into large finite sets. We will tile each of these finite sets with Følner shapes of various sizes, using progressively smaller Følner shapes to fill in whatever holes remain after placing the larger Følner shapes.
Proof of Lemma 5.
First, fix large enough so that . We will ultimately pick many “good” sizes of tiles for a large fraction of the points in . Fix many functions such that and for , where each is continuous and . For example, is such a collection of functions. Fix small enough so that . Put .
For each , let . Since the are strictly increasing in for all , . Hence, there is some large enough such that . This means that for any -many values (),
[TABLE]
We define two sequences of natural numbers of length as follows. Let be large enough so that for all . For , define , and large enough so that
[TABLE]
for all . Put . We will think of the as ranges of allowable sizes for out tiles. Finally, Let satisfy .
Define parial functions where is smallest such that if such a exists. Set . Hence, , so , because otherwise, setting ,
[TABLE]
Hence, at least fraction of points have fraction of points of lying in . Since , it now suffices to show that for a point such that at least fraction of is contained in , we can tile up to fraction with tiles of the form .
We claim that in steps, , we can tile up to fraction. As discussed earlier, we will start by tiling with our largest Følner shapes, i.e. , and in each step we will move down a size.
In step , apply Lemma 6 with and
[TABLE]
so that the constructed set of tiles is contained in the set of uncovered points in .
See Fig. 1 for a sketch of the tiling process for . In the first picture, we place the tiles from , and in the second picture we remove strips along the boundaries of as well as . We also mark the points and for which is not defined. Applying Lemma 6 to (the remaining points), we place smaller tiles, seen in a lighter color in the third picture.
Now, is almost all of the uncovered points in except possibly:
- (1)
A small strip along the boundary of , of size since . 2. (2)
The set of points on which is not defined, which has fewer than points. 3. (3)
A small strip along the boundary of the covered points from each of the previous steps. Fix , and consider the set of covered points from the step. We might miss a strip of size . Note that since the boundary of consists of Følner shapes of sizes in , we have , so
[TABLE]
where the penultimate inequality comes from our choice of to be large enough that implies , and the final inequality comes from and the fact that for any .
In total, is missing at most uncovered points from . If , we have that covers at least fraction of , and . So covers at least , and we are left with , so we cover all but fraction of .
If , assume covers all but fraction of . Notice that
[TABLE]
since both and are contained in the set of uncovered points of . Since covers at least fraction of , at most fraction of is left uncovered. So covers all of but at most
[TABLE]
many points. This concludes the proof of our claim. Iterate this algorithm times so that we have covered all but fraction of . Since, by hypothesis, both , this concludes the proof. ∎
References
