Real extensions of distal minimal flows and continuous topological ergodic decompositions (Q2874669)

Building on the notions of Rokhlin extensions and Rokhlin skew products, that had been studied in the measure theoretic setting [\textit{M. Lemańczyk} and \textit{E. Lesigne}, J. Anal. Math. 85, 43--86 (2001; Zbl 1038.37003); \textit{M. Lemańczyk} and \textit{F. Parreau}, Ergodic Theory Dyn. Syst. 23, No. 5, 1525--1550 (2003; Zbl 1043.37004)], the author introduces the notion of a ``perturbed Rokhlin skew product''. He then uses it to study topologically recurrent real skew product extensions of distal minimal compact metric flows, with a compactly generated abelian acting group. The following main results are proven.NEWLINENEWLINEStructure Theorem: Apart from a coboundary, every such extension is a perturbation of a Rokhlin skew product.NEWLINENEWLINEDecomposition Theorem: The topological ergodic decomposition of every such extension into prolongations is continuous and compact in the hyperspace of non-empty closed subsets equipped with the Fell topology. NEWLINENEWLINETopological Mackey Action Theorem: The right translation of \(\mathbb{R}\) acts minimally on the set of the above prolongations. This flow is a distal (possibly trivial) extension of a weakly mixing compact metric flow, and it is distal if and only if the perturbation of the Rokhlin skew product is defined by a topological coboundary.NEWLINENEWLINEUniqueness of Representation Theorem: Apart from a coboundary the representation is unique up to isomorphy and time rescaling.NEWLINENEWLINEThe main tool used in the proofs of the above results is \textit{H. Furstenberg}'s structure theorem [Am. J. Math. 85, 477--515 (1963; Zbl 0199.27202)].