We investigate to what extent a minimal topological dynamical system is uniquely determined by a set of return times to some open set. We show that in many situations, this is indeed the case as long as the closure of this open set has no non-trivial translational symmetries. For instance, we show that under this assumption, two Kronecker systems with the same set of return times must be isomorphic. More generally, we show that if a minimal dynamical system has a set of return times that coincides with a set of return times to some open set in a Kronecker system with translationarily asymmetric closure, then that Kronecker system must be a factor. We also study similar problems involving nilsystems and polynomial return times. We state a number of questions on whether these results extend to other homogeneous spaces and transitive group actions, some of which are already interesting for finite groups.

We develop a forcing theory of topological entropy for Reeb flows in dimension three. A transverse link L in a closed contact $3$-manifold $(Y,\xi )$ is said to force topological entropy if $(Y,\xi )$ admits a Reeb flow with vanishing topological entropy, and every Reeb flow on $(Y,\xi )$ realizing L as a set of periodic Reeb orbits has positive topological entropy. Our main results establish topological conditions on a transverse link L, which imply that L forces topological entropy. These conditions are formulated in terms of two Floer theoretical invariants: the cylindrical contact homology on the complement of transverse links introduced by Momin [A. Momin. J. Mod. Dyn. 5 (2011), 409–472], and the strip Legendrian contact homology on the complement of transverse links, introduced by Alves [M. R. R. Alves. PhD Thesis, Université Libre de Bruxelles, 2014] and further developed here. We then use these results to show that on every closed contact $3$-manifold that admits a Reeb flow with vanishing topological entropy, there exist transverse knots that force topological entropy.

Dendric shifts are defined by combinatorial restrictions of the extensions of the words in their languages. This family generalizes well-known families of shifts such as Sturmian shifts, Arnoux–Rauzy shifts and codings of interval exchange transformations. It is known that any minimal dendric shift has a primitive $\mathcal {S}$-adic representation where the morphisms in $\mathcal {S}$ are positive tame automorphisms of the free group generated by the alphabet. In this paper, we investigate those $\mathcal {S}$-adic representations, heading towards an $\mathcal {S}$-adic characterization of this family. We obtain such a characterization in the ternary case, involving a directed graph with two vertices.

We consider the complexity of special $\alpha $-limit sets, a kind of backward limit set for non-invertible dynamical systems. We show that these sets are always analytic, but not necessarily Borel, even in the case of a surjective map on the unit square. This answers a question posed by Kolyada, Misiurewicz, and Snoha.

We consider backward filtrations generated by processes coming from deterministic and probabilistic cellular automata. We prove that these filtrations are standard in the classical sense of Vershik’s theory, but we also study them from another point of view that takes into account the measure-preserving action of the shift map, for which each sigma-algebra in the filtrations is invariant. This initiates what we call the dynamical classification of factor filtrations, and the examples we study show that this classification leads to different results.

Mixing rates, relaxation rates, and decay of correlations for dynamics defined by potentials with summable variations are well understood, but little is known for non-summable variations. This paper exhibits upper bounds for these quantities for dynamics defined by potentials with square-summable variations. We obtain these bounds as corollaries of a new block coupling inequality between pairs of dynamics starting with different histories. As applications of our results, we prove a new weak invariance principle and a Hoeffding-type inequality.

It has been recently proved that the automorphism group of a minimal subshift with non-superlinear word complexity is virtually $\mathbb {Z}$ [Cyr and Kra. The automorphism group of a shift of linear growth: beyond transitivity. Forum Math. Sigma 3 (2015), e5; Donoso et al. On automorphism groups of low complexity subshifts. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. 36(1) (2016), 64–95]. In this article we extend this result to a broader class proving that the automorphism group of a minimal $\mathcal {S}$-adic subshift of finite alphabet rank is virtually $\mathbb {Z}$. The proof is based on a fine combinatorial analysis of the asymptotic classes in this type of subshifts, which we prove are a finite number.

We prove that the automorphism group of the semigeneric directed graph (in the sense of Cherlin’s classification) is uniquely ergodic.

We prove that in every compact space of Delone sets in ${\mathbb {R}}^d$, which is minimal with respect to the action by translations, either all Delone sets are uniformly spread or continuously many distinct bounded displacement equivalence classes are represented, none of which contains a lattice. The implied limits are taken with respect to the Chabauty–Fell topology, which is the natural topology on the space of closed subsets of ${\mathbb {R}}^d$. This topology coincides with the standard local topology in the finite local complexity setting, and it follows that the dichotomy holds for all minimal spaces of Delone sets associated with well-studied constructions such as cut-and-project sets and substitution tilings, whether or not finite local complexity is assumed.

A Cantor minimal system is of finite topological rank if it has a Bratteli–Vershik representation whose number of vertices per level is uniformly bounded. We prove that if the topological rank of a minimal dynamical system on a Cantor set is finite, then all its minimal Cantor factors have finite topological rank as well. This gives an affirmative answer to a question posed by Donoso, Durand, Maass, and Petite in full generality. As a consequence, we obtain the dichotomy of Downarowicz and Maass for Cantor factors of finite-rank Cantor minimal systems: they are either odometers or subshifts.

We characterize topological conjugacy classes of one-sided topological Markov shifts in terms of the associated Cuntz–Krieger algebras and their gauge actions with potentials.

We give an example of a principal algebraic action of the non-commutative free group ${\mathbb {F}}$ of rank two by automorphisms of a connected compact abelian group for which there is an explicit measurable isomorphism with the full Bernoulli 3-shift action of ${\mathbb {F}}$. The isomorphism is defined using homoclinic points, a method that has been used to construct symbolic covers of algebraic actions. To our knowledge, this is the first example of a Bernoulli algebraic action of ${\mathbb {F}}$ without an obvious independent generator. Our methods can be generalized to a large class of acting groups.

We show that the dynamic asymptotic dimension of an action of an infinite virtually cyclic group on a compact Hausdorff space is always one if the action has the marker property. This in particular covers a well-known result of Guentner, Willett, and Yu for minimal free actions of infinite cyclic groups. As a direct consequence, we substantially extend a famous result by Toms and Winter on the nuclear dimension of $C^{*}$-algebras arising from minimal free $\mathbb {Z}$-actions. Moreover, we also prove the marker property for all free actions of countable groups on finite-dimensional compact Hausdorff spaces, generalizing a result of Szabó in the metrisable setting.

We give a necessary and sufficient condition on $\beta $ of the natural extension of a $\beta $-shift, so that any equilibrium measure for a function of bounded total oscillations is a weak Gibbs measure.

For a continuous function $f:[0,1] \to [0,1]$ we define a splitting sequence admitted by f and show that the inverse limit of f is an arc if and only if f does not admit a splitting sequence.

We prove that, up to topological conjugacy, every Smale space admits an Ahlfors regular Bowen measure. Bowen’s construction of Markov partitions implies that Smale spaces are factors of topological Markov chains. The latter are equipped with Parry’s measure, which is Ahlfors regular. By extending Bowen’s construction, we create a tool for transferring the Ahlfors regularity of the Parry measure down to the Bowen measure of the Smale space. An essential part of our method uses a refined notion of approximation graphs over compact metric spaces. Moreover, we obtain new estimates for the Hausdorff, box-counting and Assouad dimensions of a large class of Smale spaces.

Let G be a group and A a set equipped with a collection of finitary operations. We study cellular automata $$\tau :{A^G} \to {A^G}$$ that preserve the operations AG of induced componentwise from the operations of A. We show τ that is an endomorphism of AG if and only if its local function is a homomorphism. When A is entropic (i.e. all finitary operations are homomorphisms), we establish that the set EndCA(G;A), consisting of all such endomorphic cellular automata, is isomorphic to the direct limit of Hom(AS, A), where S runs among all finite subsets of G. In particular, when A is an R-module, we show that EndCA(G;A) is isomorphic to the group algebra $${\rm{End}}(A)[G]$$. Moreover, when A is a finite Boolean algebra, we establish that the number of endomorphic cellular automata over AG admitting a memory set S is precisely $${(k|S|)^k}$$, where k is the number of atoms of A.

We develop a Conley index theory for retarded functional differential equations $\dot x=f(x_{t})$ with values in a differentiable manifold and (merely) continuous nonlinearities f. We use this index to establish an existence result for nonconstant full solutions of such equations.

We consider continuous cocycles arising from CMV and Jacobi matrices. Assuming that the Verblunsky and Jacobi coefficients arise from generalized skew-shifts, we prove that uniform hyperbolicity of the associated cocycles is $C^0$-dense. This implies that the associated CMV and Jacobi matrices have a Cantor spectrum for a generic continuous sampling map.