Invariant sets and measures of nonexpansive group automorphisms (Q1769168)

This paper studies the properties of nonexpansive, ergodic and totally irreducible automorphisms \(\alpha\) of a compact connected abelian group \(X\), and their invariant measures. It is well known that for such an \(\alpha: X\to X\), the Haar measure \(\lambda_X\) is invariant and \((X,\alpha,{\mathcal B}_X,\lambda_X)\) is isomorphic to a Bernoulli shift. The results of this paper can be thought of as generalizations of \textit{D. J. Rudolph's} theorem concerning measures on the circle that are both \(2\times\)- and \(3\times\)-invariant [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 10, No. 2, 395--406 (1990; Zbl 0709.28013)] and the results of \textit{A. Katok} and \textit{R. J. Spatzier} [Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 16, No. 4, 751--778 (1996; Zbl 0859.58021); correction ibid. 18, No. 2, 503--507 (1998)]. In this paper it is shown that all \(\alpha\)-invariant probability measures \(\mu\), singular with respect to \(\lambda_X\), have the property that the conditional measure \(\rho_x\) on the central leaf through \(x\) is finite for almost every \(x\in X\).