Some sofic shifts cannot commute with nonwandering shifts of finite type (Q1766839)

Let \(\Sigma=\{0,1,\ldots,n-1\}^{Z}\) be the space of bi-infinite sequences, and \(\sigma\) the full shift, \(\sigma(x)=y\), \(y_{n}=x_{n+1}\). The restriction of this map to a closed, shift--invarint subset \(S\) is called subshift. \(\sigma_{| S}\) is a shift of finite type (SFT) if there exists a finite set \({\mathcal W}\) of finite words such that \(S\) consists in all sequences in \(\Sigma\) which do not contain words from \({\mathcal W}\). A block code is a map \(\varphi\) between subshifts such that there exists \(N\) such that for all \(x\) in the domain, the word \(x[-N,N]\) determines the symbol \((\varphi x)_{0}\). A sophic shift is a subshift which is the image of an SFT under a block code. A subshift is irreducible if it has a dense forward orbit. In [\textit{M. Nasu}, Textile systems for endomorphisms and automorphisms of the shift, Mem. Am. Math. Soc. 546 (1995; Zbl 0845.54031)] it was raised the question whether an expansive automorphism of a shift of finite type must be a shift of finite type. A counterexample in the case when the shift of finite type is reducible is provided in the Appendix of the paper under review, and it is produced by Doris Fiebig. It appears that no other result on Nasu's question has been given. In this paper, the author proves that an expansive automorphism of a nonwandering shift of finite type cannot be conjugated to an almost Markov strictly sophic shift. Since in the example of D. Fiebig the expansive automorphism of the reducible shift of finite type is almost Markov, and the reducible shift of finite type is wandering, the two results together point out the importance of the irreducibility condition.