Ultragraph shift spaces and chaos (Q2287834)

An ultragraph is a countable set of vertices and a countable set of functions mapping those vertices to non-empty sets of vertices. These functions are called edges. An ultragraph shift space is a subshift \(X\) associated with an ultragraph \(\mathcal{G}\) that generalises the notion of an edge shift over a finite graph (i.e., a shift of finite type). The shift space \(X\) is a dynamical system under the usual shift action. The main focus of this paper is to study various notions of chaos for this dynamical system. The main theorem of the paper helpfully summarises the authors' most important results. Namely, that the following notions of chaos are equivalent for ultragraph shift spaces: Li-Yorke chaos, distributional chaos (of types 1, 2 and 3), and the existence of an uncountable Devaney chaotic subsystem. Moreover, the authors give a combinatorial characterisation of chaos for these shift spaces in terms of the existence of a vertex in the ultragraph that admits at least two distinct closed paths whose base is the vertex. A new notion of entropy for ultragraph shift spaces is also introduced, which is analogous to topological entropy for a subshift over a finite alphabet. That is, the entropy is given by the exponential growth rate of paths of increasing length in the defining ultragraph. The authors use their combinatorial characterisation of chaos to show that the above notions of chaos and their definition of entropy are equivalent. They end with an example of an ultragraph shift space that admits a non-empty but strictly countable set of distributionally scrambled pairs of type one. The paper is well written and self-contained, with all potentially unfamiliar notions being properly defined when they are introduced. The shift spaces being studied in this paper are likely to be of interest to those that care about symbolic dynamics where the alphabet is no longer finite. Likewise, those that are interested in when many notions of chaos can coincide for large classes of system will likely find the core focus of this paper interesting.