On isomorphism problem for von Neumann flows with one discontinuity (Q1659543)

The theory of isomorphisms of measure-preserving systems is a classical problem in ergodic theory. A von Neumann flow is a simplified model of Hamiltonian flows on the torus with critical points, and is weakly mixing, never mixing, and have purely singular spectrum. This flow is constructed by a suspension flow over an irrational rotation of the circle and under a piecewise \(C^1\) roof function with a non-zero sum of jumps. The irrational rotation has zero entropy, the classical entropy theory could not be applied here. The main idea is as follows. For von Neumann flows with one discontinuity, the slow divergence by hitting the roof and the fast divergence by hitting the discontinuity are the reasons for the divergence of the orbits. The idea is using contradiction, that is, suppose the two probability-preserving flows are conjugated by an invertible measure-preserving transformation (this is the definition of isomorphism) and take two close points for one flow such that they hit the discontinuity before they have time to split by hitting the roof. The conjugacy transformation will yield a contradiction. The continued fraction expansion of the irrational number (classified as bounded type and unbounded type), Egorov's theorem, and Luzin's theorem are used in the proof.