Entropy of measure-preserving or continuous actions of amenable discrete groups allows for various equivalent approaches. Among them are those given by the techniques developed by Ollagnier and Pinchon on the one hand and the Ornstein–Weiss lemma on the other. We extend these two approaches to the context of actions of amenable topological groups. In contrast to the discrete setting, our results reveal a remarkable difference between the two concepts of entropy in the realm of non-discrete groups: while the first quantity collapses to 0 in the non-discrete case, the second yields a well-behaved invariant for amenable unimodular groups. Concerning the latter, we moreover study the corresponding notion of topological pressure, prove a Goodwyn-type theorem, and establish the equivalence with the uniform lattice approach (for locally compact groups admitting a uniform lattice). Our study elaborates on a version of the Ornstein–Weiss lemma due to Gromov.

Let $l\in \mathbb {N}_{\ge 1}$ and $\alpha : \mathbb {Z}^l\rightarrow \text {Aut}(\mathscr {N})$ be an action of $\mathbb {Z}^l$ by automorphisms on a compact nilmanifold $\mathscr{N}$. We assume the action of every $\alpha (z)$ is ergodic for $z\in \mathbb {Z}^l\smallsetminus \{0\}$ and show that $\alpha $ satisfies exponential n-mixing for any integer $n\geq 2$. This extends the results of Gorodnik and Spatzier [Mixing properties of commuting nilmanifold automorphisms. Acta Math. 215 (2015), 127–159].

Let $\mathbb {V}$ be a polarized variation of Hodge structure over a smooth complex quasi-projective variety $S$. In this paper, we give a complete description of the typical Hodge locus for such variations. We prove that it is either empty or equidistributed with respect to a natural differential form, the pull–push form. In particular, it is always analytically dense when the pull–push form does not vanish. When the weight is two, the Hodge numbers are $(q,p,q)$ and the dimension of $S$ is least $rq$, we prove that the typical locus where the Picard rank is at least $r$ is equidistributed in $S$ with respect to the volume form $c_q^r$, where $c_q$ is the $q$th Chern form of the Hodge bundle. We obtain also several equidistribution results of the typical locus in Shimura varieties: a criterion for the density of the typical Hodge loci of a variety in $\mathcal {A}_g$, equidistribution of certain families of CM points and equidistribution of Hecke translates of curves and surfaces in $\mathcal {A}_g$. These results are proved in the much broader context of dynamics on homogeneous spaces of Lie groups which are of independent interest. The pull–push form appears in this greater generality, we provide several tools to determine it, and we compute it in many examples.

In this paper, we address the problem of computing the topological entropy of a map $\psi : G \to G$, where G is a Lie group, given by some power $\psi (g) = g^k$, with k a positive integer. When G is abelian, $\psi $ is an endomorphism and its topological entropy is given by $h(\psi ) = \dim (T(G)) \log (k)$, where $T(G)$ is the maximal torus of G, as shown by Patrão [The topological entropy of endomorphisms of Lie groups. Israel J. Math. 234 (2019), 55–80]. However, when G is not abelian, $\psi $ is no longer an endomorphism and these previous results cannot be used. Still, $\psi $ has some interesting symmetries, for example, it commutes with the conjugations of G. In this paper, the structure theory of Lie groups is used to show that $h(\psi ) = \dim (T)\log (k)$, where T is a maximal torus of G, generalizing the formula in the abelian case. In particular, the topological entropy of powers on compact Lie groups with discrete center is always positive, in contrast to what happens to endomorphisms of such groups, which always have null entropy.

Multiplicative constants are a fundamental tool in the study of maximal representations. In this paper, we show how to extend such notion, and the associated framework, to measurable cocycles theory. As an application of this approach, we define and study the Cartan invariant for measurable $\mathrm{PU}(m,1)$ -cocycles of complex hyperbolic lattices.

Let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F4}$ be a compact orientable surface of genus $g=1$ with $n=1$ boundary component. The mapping class group $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}$ of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F4}$ acts on the $\mathsf{SU}(3)$-character variety of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6F4}$. We show that the action is ergodic with respect to the natural symplectic measure on the character variety.

The aim of the article is to provide a characterization of the Haagerup property for locally compact, second countable groups in terms of actions on $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70E}$-finite measure spaces. It is inspired by the very first definition of amenability, namely the existence of an invariant mean on the algebra of essentially bounded, measurable functions on the group.

In the realm of Delone sets in locally compact, second countable Hausdorff groups, we develop a dynamical systems approach in order to study the continuity behavior of measured quantities arising from point sets. A special focus is both on the autocorrelation, as well as on the density of states for random bounded operators. It is shown that for uniquely ergodic limit systems, the latter measures behave continuously with respect to the Chabauty–Fell convergence of hulls. In the special situation of Euclidean spaces, our results complement recent developments in describing spectra as topological limits: we show that the measured quantities under consideration can be approximated via periodic analogs.

If $G\ncong \operatorname{Alt}(\mathbb{N})$ is an inductive limit of finite alternating groups, then the indecomposable characters of $G$ are precisely the associated characters of the ergodic invariant random subgroups of $G$.

We give a short proof of a result of T. Bates and T. Giordano stating that any uniformly bounded Borel cocycle into a finite von Neumann algebra is cohomologous to a unitary cocycle. We also point out a separability issue in their proof. Our approach is based on the existence of a non-positive curvature metric on the positive cone of a finite von Neumann algebra.

We generalize Brooks’ theorem to show that if $G$ is a Borel graph on a standard Borel space $X$ of degree bounded by $d\geqslant 3$ which contains no $(d+1)$ -cliques, then $G$ admits a ${\it\mu}$ -measurable $d$ -coloring with respect to any Borel probability measure ${\it\mu}$ on $X$ , and a Baire measurable $d$ -coloring with respect to any compatible Polish topology on $X$ . The proof of this theorem uses a new technique for constructing one-ended spanning subforests of Borel graphs, as well as ideas from the study of list colorings. We apply the theorem to graphs arising from group actions to obtain factor of IID $d$ -colorings of Cayley graphs of degree $d$ , except in two exceptional cases.

A discrete group $G$ is called identity excluding if the only irreducible unitary representation of $G$ which weakly contains the 1-dimensional identity representation is the 1-dimensional identity representation itself. Given a unitary representation $\pi $ of $G$ and a probability measure $\mu $ on $G$, let ${{P}_{\mu }}$ denote the $\mu $-average $\int{\pi (g)\mu (dg)}$. The goal of this article is twofold: (1) to study the asymptotic behaviour of the powers $P_{\mu }^{n}$, and (2) to provide a characterization of countable amenable identity excluding groups. We prove that for every adapted probability measure $\mu $ on an identity excluding group and every unitary representation $\pi $ there exists and orthogonal projection ${{E}_{\mu }}$ onto a $\pi $-invariant subspace such that $s-{{\lim }_{n\to \infty }}\,(P_{\mu }^{n}\,-\,\pi {{(a)}^{n}}\,{{E}_{\mu }})\,\,=\,0$ for every $a\,\in $ supp $\mu $. This also remains true for suitably defined identity excluding locally compact groups. We show that the class of countable amenable identity excluding groups coincides with the class of $\text{FC}$-hypercentral groups; in the finitely generated case this is precisely the class of groups of polynomial growth. We also establish that every adapted random walk on a countable amenable identity excluding group is ergodic.

We prove that every ergodic amenable action of an algebraic group over a local field of characteristic zero is induced from an ergodic action of an amenable subgroup.

An explicit description of a hyperbolic canonical coordinate system for an expansive automorphism of a compact connected abelian group is given. These dynamical systems are factors of subshifts of finite type. Some properties of the associated crossed product C*-algebra are discussed. In these examples, the C* -algebras of Ruelle are crossed product algebras.