A criterion for minimality of restrictions of compact minimal abelian flows (Q5960422)

The context of the paper is a minimal action of an abelian topological group \(T\) on a compact space \(X\). Let \(S\) be a syndetic subgroup of \(T\). The envelope of \(S\) is defined to be the set of \(t\in T\) such that \(t.x\in \overline{S.x}\) for some \(x\in X\). (In the definition one can fix a particular \(x\in X\); the corresponding subset of \(T\) turns out to be independent of the choice of \(x\).) One result is a criterion for minimality of the restricted action of \(S\) to \(X\), which says in part that the restricted action is minimal if and only if the envelope of \(S\) is all of \(T\). From this a criterion for total minimality of the \(T\) action is derived. As applications, a new proof is given of a theorem of \textit{W. Parry} on skew extensions [Z. Wahrscheinlichkeitstheor. Verw. Geb. 13, 95-113 (1969; Zbl 0184.26901)], and some sufficient conditions for non-total minimality are described.