A class of compact group extensions of \(\beta \)-transformations (Q624567)

The author considers a skew product map \(T_\varphi:[0,1)\times G\to [0,1)\times G\) given by \(T_\varphi(x,g)=(Tx,g\cdot\varphi(x))\), where \(T\) is a \(\beta\) transformation, i.e. \(T(x)=\beta x\quad(\text{mod}\;1)\), with \(\beta\geq 2\), and \(\varphi\) is a compact group \(G\)-valued step function with a finite number of discontinuities. Several sufficient conditions for establishing ergodicity and strong mixing of the map \(T_\varphi\) are given. When \(G=\mathbb T=\{z\in\mathbb C: |z|=1\}\), it is shown that if there exists \(r>0\) such that \(\varphi(x)\) is irrational for all \(x\in[0,r)\) then the skew product map \(T_\varphi\) is ergodic. Moreover, if the closed group generated by the range of \(\varphi(x)\) is \(\mathbb T\), then \(T_\varphi\) is weakly mixing when the number of discontinuities is less than \([\beta]-1\), or there exists \(0\leq k\leq [\beta]-1\) such that \(\varphi(x)\) is constant on \([\frac k\beta,\frac{k+1}{\beta})\). As a consequence a new condition is derived to show that, for certain step function observables, the central limit theorem holds for the \(\beta\) transformations. As another application, the author gives conditions to prove ergodicity and exactness of the skew product map \( T_{\beta,a,\omega}:[0,1]\times[0,1]\to [0,1]\times[0,1]\) given by \(T_{\beta,a,\omega}(x,y)=(\beta x, y+a x+ \omega)\;(\text{mod}\;1)\), where \(a,\omega\in\mathbb R\).