On the \(K\) property for Maharam extensions of Bernoulli shifts and a question of Krengel (Q2017125)

The Maharam extension of a non-singular transformation \(T:X\to X\) of a probability space \((X,\mathcal{B},\mu)\) is the skew product extension of \((X,T)\) with the Radon-Nikodym cocycle. The Maharam extension is ergodic if and only if the transformation \(T\) is of type \({\text{III}}_1\); in this paper it is shown that if \(T\) is a conservative non-singular Bernoulli shift with the \(K\) property and with the one-sided shift as the exact factor (these notions come from the work of \textit{C. E. Silva} and \textit{P. Thieullen} [J. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 52, No. 3, 497--516 (1995; Zbl 0867.28012)]) then the Maharam extension of \(T\) is a \(K\) transformation. In particular, in this case the product of the Maharam extension with any ergodic measure-preserving system is ergodic (the appropriate notion of weak-mixing in this setting), and the Maharam extension has countable Lebesgue spectrum. The \(K\) property for the Maharam extension proved here provides the following dichotomy: an ergodic non-singular \(K\) Bernoulli shift is either of type \({\text{II}}_1\) (when the measure is equivalent to a stationary product measure), or is of type \({\text{III}}_1\).