Geometry, dynamics, and arithmetic of $S$-adic shifts (Q2421943)

Substitutive dynamical systems produced by substitutions with a dominant Pisot eigenvalue have pure discrete spectrum in both the symbolic and the tiling settings. In this substantial work, the stationary (that is, driven by iteration of a single map on a single space) setting of substitutive dynamical systems is replaced by a non-stationary setup of a sequence of transformations along a sequence of spaces. The dominant Pisot eigenvalue is here replaced by the requirement that the second Lyapunov exponent of the dynamical system is negative, corresponding to hyperbolic dynamics with a one-dimensional unstable foliation. The setting used is referred to as \(S\)-adic (`substitution-adic'), meaning shift spaces obtained by iterating differing substitutions in a prescribed order. With some technical assumptions to avoid degenerate examples, the resulting orbit closure is a minimal symbolic system of zero entropy with \(S\)-adic substitutive structure. Much of the known structures and results of the Pisot substitutive setting are extended, including Rauzy fractals, balancedness properties of associated languages, stable and unstable splittings, connections to continued fractions of various sorts and discrete spectrum. Families of coverings and multiple tilings playing the role of the graph-directed iterated function system in the Pisot substitutive case are introduced, giving applications in number theory and a connection to toral translations. The absence of self-similar structures in the standard setting entails the development of new approaches.