No label defined (Q4379344)

Given a dynamical system (topological or measure theoretic), its family of factors have a rich structure which plays an important role in the `structure theorems' for such systems. Motivated by the work of \textit{A. del Junco}, \textit{M. Lemańczyk}, and \textit{M. K. Mentzen} [Stud. Math. 112, No. 2, 141-164 (1995; Zbl 0814.28007)] in the ergodic theoretic setting, the authors develop notion(s) of a `natural family' of factors for a topological dynamical system (t.d.s). Given a minimal t.d.s. \((X, T)\), a self joining of \((X, T)\) is any minimal subset of \((X \times X, T)\). Analogous to the measure theoretic case, the authors prove the existence of a unique smallest natural family \({\mathcal N}\) of factors which includes all factors arising from self joinings. The family \({\mathcal N}\) has the property that given any factor \(Y\) of \(X\), there exists a unique natural cover \(\widetilde Y\in{\mathcal N}\) of \(Y\) such that the map \(\widetilde Y\to Y\) is regular (unlike the measure theoretic case this need not be a group extension). The authors characterize the least member of this family as the unique maximal regular factor of \((X,T)\). Replacing the notion of self-joining in the above set-up by a more general notion of a `B-set', the authors develop an analogous notion of the corresponding `smallest natural family of factors' and characterize its least element as a Kronecker factor. Analogous notions are developed in the R. Ellis's algebraic setting (involving \(\tau\)-closed Ellis groups of minimal flows) and as a result a new structure theorem for `normal extensions' of minimal flows is proved. Finally, these results are used to prove another structure theorem for a much larger class of `semi-normal flows'. For the entire collection see [Zbl 0882.00043].