Recursive families of sets on the real number line (Q2496991)

This is an abstract of the lecture during the XXIX Summer Symposium, San Bernardino, 2005. The goal of the lecture is to establish the following: Let \(A_1,\ldots, A_m\) be measurable sets such that \(\sum_{i=1}^m A_i(x+a_{i,k})=\sum_{i=1}^mA_i(x)\) for almost every \(x\), where \(A_i(x)\) is the characteristic function of \(A_i\), and the sequences of nonzero numbers \(\{ a_{i,k}\}_{i=1}^m\) approach \(0\) as \(k\to\infty\). Then the set of subscripts \(M=\{ 1,\ldots, m\}\) can be partitioned as \(M=M_1\cup\dots\cup M_j\) so that each \(\sum_{i\in M_n}A_i(x)\), \(1\leq n\leq j\), is constant almost everywhere. Furthermore, each \(\{ A_i : i\in M_n\}\) consists of either a single set of full measure, a single set of measure zero, or intermediate sets with \(a_{i,k}=a_{i',k}\) for all \(i,i'\in M_n\) and \(k\) sufficiently large. This generalizes results of \textit{H.~Fast} and the authors [Real Anal. Exch. 29, No.~2, 835--850 (2003--2004; Zbl 1094.28001)].