We define by simple conditions two wide subclasses of the so-called Arnoux-Rauzy systems; the elements of the first one share the property of (measure-theoretic) weak mixing, thus we generalize and improve a counter-example to the conjecture that these systems are codings of rotations; those of the second one have eigenvalues, which was known hitherto only for a very small set of examples.

We construct a class of transformations similar to the Pascal transformation, except for the use of spacers, and show that these transformations are weakly mixing.

Let (f,α) be the process given by an endomorphism f and by a finite partition $\alpha ={A_i}_{i=1}^s$ of a Lebesgue space. Let E(f,α) be the class of densities of absolutely continuous invariant measures for skew products with the base (f,α). We say that (f,α) is quasi-Markovian if $E(f,\alpha )\subset g:{\bigvee }_{{B_i}_{i=1}^s}suppg={\bigcup }_{i=1}^s{A}_i\times B_i$. We show that there exists a quasi-Markovian process which is weakly mixing but not mixing. As a by-product we deduce that the set of all coboundaries which are measurable with respect to the ’chequer-wise’ partition for σ × S, where σ is...

Let 𝕋 denote the set of complex numbers of modulus 1. Let v ∈ 𝕋, v not a root of unity, and let T: 𝕋 → 𝕋 be the transformation on 𝕋 given by T(z) = vz. It is known that the problem of calculating the outer measure of a T-invariant set leads to a condition which formally has a close resemblance to Carathéodory's definition of a measurable set. In ergodic theory terms, T is not weakly mixing. Now there is an example, due to Kakutani, of a transformation ψ̃ which is weakly mixing but not strongly...