Topological dynamics beyond Polish groups (Q2055247)

\textit{R. Ellis} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 11, 540--543 (1960; Zbl 0102.38002)] proved that any topological group \(G\) admits a universal minimal flow \(M(G)\), i.e., a minimal flow which factors onto any other minimal flow, and showed this is unique in a natural sense. In familiar settings for topological dynamics (e.g., \(G=\mathbb{Z}\)) the universal minimal flow is a large and difficult to handle object. At the opposite extreme are examples of ``extremely amenable'' topological groups for which it is trivial (the group of order-preserving bijections of the rationals with the topology of pointwise convergence being an example, as shown by \textit{V. G. Pestov} [Trans. Am. Math. Soc. 350, No. 10, 4149--4165 (1998; Zbl 0911.54034)]). For a Polish group \(G\), work of many authors has built an understanding of the structure of \(M(G)\) in the case of a Polish group \(G\) with \(M(G)\) metrizable. On the other hand, much less is known in the case of metrizable \(M(G)\) when \(G\) is not a Polish group. Here a framework is developed to understand this aspect of the topological dynamics of topological groups, and in particular it is shown that the notion of ``closed almost periodic'' (CAP), for \(G\) coincides with the metrizability of \(M(G)\) in general. In addition the CAP property is shown to satisfy strong closure properties, and to have multiple formulations.