Specification and towers in shift spaces (Q1989850)

A nonuniform form of specification property is defined for one-dimensional shifts on a finite alphabet (either one-sided or invertible), and it is shown here how this implies that the shift can be modeled by a strongly positive recurrent countable state Markov shift in such a way that equilibrium states lift to this model. The motivation is in part a similar property known to hold for \(\beta\)-shifts. The main results are then used to deduce statistical properties like Bernoullicity, decay of correlations, and analyticity of the pressure, which were not previously established for such shifts, nor indeed even for the more restricted class of shifts with a uniform form of specification. Among the tools needed are almost everywhere uniform strengthenings of the pointwise ergodic theorem and Shannon-McMillan-Breiman theorem.