Ergodic theory and maximal abelian subalgebras of the hyperfinite factor (Q1865311)

For a free ergodic measure-preserving action of an abelian group \(G\) on a Lebesgue space \((X,\mu)\), the natural crossed-product algebra \(R=L^{\infty}(X,\mu)\rtimes G\) is the hyperfinite factor with the additional structure of two distinguished maximal abelian subalgebras: the image \(C\) of \(L^{\infty}(X,\mu)\) and the algebra \(S\) generated by the image of the unitaries implementing the action of \(G\). This paper concerns the problem of extracting information about the action from knowledge of \(C\) and \(S\). Specifically, the authors conjecture that if weakly-mixing actions of abelian groups \(G\) and \(G'\) have \(S\) and \(S'\) conjugates then \(G\) and \(G'\) are isomorphic, and the actions are conjugate with respect to this isomorphism. The main result in the direction of this conjecture is that it holds under the additional assumption that the isomorphism \(\gamma:R\to R'\) with \(\gamma(S)=S'\) has the property that \(\gamma(C)\) and \(C'\) are inner-conjugate. Stronger and weaker conjectures are also discussed.