Symbolic representations of nonexpansive group automorphisms

Abstract

Ifα is an irreducible nonexpansive ergodic automorphism of a compact abelian groupX (such as an irreducible nonhyperbolic ergodic toral automorphism), thenα has no finite or infinite state Markov partitions, and there are no nontrivial continuous embeddings of Markov shifts inX. In spite of this we are able to construct a symbolic spaceV and a class of shift-invariant probability measures onV each of which corresponds to anα-invariant probability measure onX. Moreover, everyα-invariant probability measure onX arises essentially in this way.