UW Rainwater Seminar
Spring 2011




Date: May 10 at 2:30

Location: UW Padelford C-401

Speaker: Michael Hochman, Hebrew University and Microsoft Research

Title: Infinite measure preserving Z^d actions without smooth models

Abstract: By a classical theorem of Krengel, if f is a map preserving an infinite, sigma-finite measure, then it is measurably isomorphic to a diffeomorphism of a compact manifold preserving a Borel measure. This fact is related to others which show that there is no good notion of entropy for infinite measure preserving systems. It turns out that there do exist Z^d actions, d>1, which do not have smooth models in the above sense. The obstruction involves a "slow entropy" invariant a-la Katok and Thouvenot. I will discuss this result, starting from the classical results for probability-preserving actions and infinite measure preserving transformations.