Stable decompositions and rigidity for products of countable equivalence relations

Abstract

We show that the “stabilization” of any countable ergodic probability measure preserving (p.m.p.) equivalence relation which is not Schmidt, i.e. admits no central sequences in its full group, always gives rise to a stable equivalence relation with a unique stable decomposition, providing the first non-strongly ergodic such examples. In the proof, we moreover establish a new local characterization of the Schmidt property. We also prove some new structural results for product equivalence relations and orbit equivalence relations of diagonal product actions.