Transitive action on finite points of a full shift and a finitary Ryan’s theorem

Abstract

We show that on the four-symbol full shift, there is a finitely generated subgroup of the automorphism group whose action is (set-theoretically) transitive of all orders on the points of finite support, up to the necessary caveats due to shift-commutation. As a corollary, we obtain that there is a finite set of automorphisms whose centralizer is $\mathbb{Z}$ (the shift group), giving a finitary version of Ryan’s theorem (on the four-symbol full shift), suggesting an automorphism group invariant for mixing subshifts of finite type (SFTs). We show that any such set of automorphisms must generate an infinite group, and also show that there is also a group with this transitivity property that is a subgroup of the commutator subgroup and whose elements can be written as compositions of involutions. We ask many related questions and prove some easy transitivity results for the group of reversible Turing machines, topological full groups and Thompson’s $V$ .