We prove three results concerning the existence of Bohr sets in threefold sumsets. More precisely, letting G be a countable discrete abelian group and $\phi _1, \phi _2, \phi _3: G \to G$ be commuting endomorphisms whose images have finite indices, we show that

1. (1) If $A \subset G$ has positive upper Banach density and $\phi _1 + \phi _2 + \phi _3 = 0$ , then $\phi _1(A) + \phi _2(A) + \phi _3(A)$ contains a Bohr set. This generalizes a theorem of Bergelson and Ruzsa in $\mathbb {Z}$ and a recent result of the first author.

2. (2) For any partition $G = \bigcup _{i=1}^r A_i$ , there exists an $i \in \{1, \ldots , r\}$ such that $\phi _1(A_i) + \phi _2(A_i) - \phi _2(A_i)$ contains a Bohr set. This generalizes a result of the second and third authors from $\mathbb {Z}$ to countable abelian groups.

3. (3) If $B, C \subset G$ have positive upper Banach density and $G = \bigcup _{i=1}^r A_i$ is a partition, $B + C + A_i$ contains a Bohr set for some $i \in \{1, \ldots , r\}$ . This is a strengthening of a theorem of Bergelson, Furstenberg and Weiss.

All results are quantitative in the sense that the radius and rank of the Bohr set obtained depends only on the indices $[G:\phi _j(G)]$ , the upper Banach density of A (in (1)), or the number of sets in the given partition (in (2) and (3)).

We prove the convergence and ergodicity of a wide class of real and higher-dimensional continued fraction algorithms, including folded and $\alpha $ -type variants of complex, quaternionic, octonionic, and Heisenberg continued fractions, which we combine under the framework of Iwasawa continued fractions. The proof is based on the interplay of continued fractions and hyperbolic geometry, the ergodicity of geodesic flow in associated modular manifolds, and a variation on the notion of geodesic coding that we refer to as geodesic marking. As a corollary of our study of markable geodesics, we obtain a generalization of Serret’s tail-equivalence theorem for almost all points. The results are new even in the case of some real and complex continued fractions.

We consider the two-dimensional shrinking target problem in beta dynamical systems (for general $\beta>1$ ) with general errors of approximation. Let $f, g$ be two positive continuous functions. For any $x_0,y_0\in [0,1]$ , define the shrinking target set

$$ \begin{align*}E(T_\beta, f,g):=\left\{(x,y)\in [0,1]^2: \begin{array}{@{}ll@{}} \lvert T_{\beta}^{n}x-x_{0}\rvert <e^{-S_nf(x)}\\[1ex] \lvert T_{\beta}^{n}y-y_{0}\rvert < e^{-S_ng(y)} \end{array} \ {\text{for infinitely many}} \ n\in \mathbb N \right\}, \end{align*} $$

where $S_nf(x)=\sum _{j=0}^{n-1}f(T_\beta ^jx)$ is the Birkhoff sum. We calculate the Hausdorff dimension of this set and prove that it is the solution to some pressure function. This represents the first result of this kind for the higher-dimensional beta dynamical systems.

For a polynomial progression

$$ \begin{align*}(x,\; x+P_1(y),\ldots,\; x+P_{t}(y)),\end{align*} $$

$P_1, \ldots ,\!P_t$

$$ \begin{align*}(x,\; x+y^2,\; x+2y^2,\; x+y^3,\; x+2y^3),\end{align*} $$

$\mathbb {Z}/N\mathbb {Z}$

$\mathbb {Z}/N\mathbb {Z}$

Let $\mathcal {P}$ be an (unbounded) countable multiset of primes (that is, every prime may appear multiple times) and let $G=\bigoplus _{p\in \mathcal {P}}\mathbb {F}_p$ . We develop a Host–Kra structure theory for the universal characteristic factors of an ergodic G-system. More specifically, we generalize the main results of Bergelson, Tao and Ziegler [An inverse theorem for the uniformity seminorms associated with the action of $\mathbb {F}_p^\infty $ . Geom. Funct. Anal. 19(6) (2010), 1539–1596], who studied these factors in the special case $\mathcal {P}=\{p,p,p,\ldots \}$ for some fixed prime p. As an application we deduce a Khintchine-type recurrence theorem in the flavor of Bergelson, Tao and Ziegler [Multiple recurrence and convergence results associated to $F_p^\omega $ -actions. J. Anal. Math. 127 (2015), 329–378] and Bergelson, Host and Kra [Multiple recurrence and nilsequences. Invent. Math. 160(2) (2005), 261–303, with an appendix by I. Ruzsa].

In this paper we prove bounds for ergodic averages for nilflows on general higher-step nilmanifolds. Under Diophantine condition on the frequency of a toral projection of the flow, we prove that almost all orbits become equidistributed at polynomial speed. We analyze the rate of decay which is determined by the number of steps and structure of general nilpotent Lie algebras. Our main result follows from the technique of controlling scaling operators in irreducible representations and measure estimation on close return orbits on general nilmanifolds.

We prove the logarithmic Sarnak conjecture for sequences of subquadratic word growth. In particular, we show that the Liouville function has at least quadratically many sign patterns. We deduce the main theorem from a variant which bounds the correlations between multiplicative functions and sequences with subquadratically many words which occur with positive logarithmic density. This allows us to actually prove that our multiplicative functions do not locally correlate with sequences of subquadratic word growth. We also prove a conditional result which shows that if the ( $\kappa -1$ )-Fourier uniformity conjecture holds then the Liouville function does not correlate with sequences with $O(n^{t-\varepsilon })$ many words of length n where $t = \kappa (\kappa +1)/2$ . We prove a variant of the $1$ -Fourier uniformity conjecture where the frequencies are restricted to any set of box dimension less than $1$ .

We obtain estimates on the uniform convergence rate of the Birkhoff average of a continuous observable over torus translations and affine skew product toral transformations. The convergence rate depends explicitly on the modulus of continuity of the observable and on the arithmetic properties of the frequency defining the transformation. Furthermore, we show that for the one-dimensional torus translation, these estimates are nearly optimal.

We study Smale skew product endomorphisms (introduced in Mihailescu and Urbański [Skew product Smale endomorphisms over countable shifts of finite type. Ergod. Th. & Dynam. Sys. doi: 10.1017/etds.2019.31. Published online June 2019]) now over countable graph-directed Markov systems, and we prove the exact dimensionality of conditional measures in fibers, and then the global exact dimensionality of the equilibrium measure itself. Our results apply to large classes of systems and have many applications. They apply, for instance, to natural extensions of graph-directed Markov systems. Another application is to skew products over parabolic systems. We also give applications in ergodic number theory, for example to the continued fraction expansion, and the backward fraction expansion. In the end we obtain a general formula for the Hausdorff (and pointwise) dimension of equilibrium measures with respect to the induced maps of natural extensions ${\mathcal{T}}_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}$ of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}$-maps $T_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}}$, for arbitrary $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FD}>1$.

We prove effective equidistribution of primitive rational points and of primitive rational points defined by monomials along long horocycle orbits in products of the torus and the modular surface. This answers a question posed in joint work by the first and the last named author with Shahar Mozes and Uri Shapira. Under certain congruence conditions we prove the joint equidistribution of conjugate rational points in the 2-torus and the modular surface.

We establish the limiting distribution of certain subsets of Farey sequences, i.e., sequences of primitive rational points, on expanding horospheres in covers $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}\backslash \text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$ of $\text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{Z})\backslash \text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$, where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}$ is a finite-index subgroup of $\text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{Z})$. These subsets can be obtained by projecting to the hyperplane $\{(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n+1})\in \mathbb{R}^{n+1}:x_{n+1}=1\}$ sets of the form $\mathbf{A}=\bigcup _{j=1}^{J}\mathbf{a}_{j}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}$, where for all $j$, $\mathbf{a}_{j}$ is a primitive lattice point in $\mathbb{Z}^{n+1}$. Our method involves applying the equidistribution of expanding horospheres in quotients of $\text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$ developed by Marklof and Strömbergsson, and more precisely understanding how the full Farey sequence distributes in $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}\backslash \text{SL}(n+1,\mathbb{R})$ when embedded on expanding horospheres as done in previous work by Marklof. For each of the Farey sequence subsets, we extend the statistical results by Marklof regarding the full multidimensional Farey sequences, and solutions by Athreya and Ghosh to Diophantine approximation problems of Erdős–Szüsz–Turán and Kesten. We also prove that Marklof’s result on the asymptotic distribution of Frobenius numbers holds for sets of primitive lattice points of the form $\mathbf{A}$.

Let $X$ be a finite-dimensional connected compact abelian group equipped with the normalized Haar measure $\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}$. We obtain the following mean ergodic theorem over ‘thin’ phase sets. Fix $k\geq 1$ and, for every $n\geq 1$, let $A_{n}$ be a subset of $\mathbb{Z}^{k}\cap [-n,n]^{k}$. Assume that $(A_{n})_{n\geq 1}$ has $\unicode[STIX]{x1D714}(1/n)$ density in the sense that $\lim _{n\rightarrow \infty }(|A_{n}|/n^{k-1})=\infty$. Let $T_{1},\ldots ,T_{k}$ be ergodic automorphisms of $X$. We have

$$\begin{eqnarray}\frac{1}{|A_{n}|}\mathop{\sum }_{(n_{1},\ldots ,n_{k})\in A_{n}}f_{1}(T_{1}^{n_{1}}(x))\cdots f_{k}(T_{k}^{n_{k}}(x))\stackrel{L_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}^{2}}{\longrightarrow }\int f_{1}\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}\cdots \int f_{k}\,d\unicode[STIX]{x1D707},\end{eqnarray}$$

$f_{1},\ldots ,f_{k}\in L_{\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}}^{\infty }$

$T_{i}$

$A_{n}$

$[0,n]^{k}$

$n$

$A_{i}$

Let $(X,{\mathcal{B}},\unicode[STIX]{x1D707},T)$ be an ergodic measure-preserving system, let $A\in {\mathcal{B}}$ and let $\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}>0$. We study the largeness of sets of the form

$$\begin{eqnarray}S=\{n\in \mathbb{N}:\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(A\cap T^{-f_{1}(n)}A\cap T^{-f_{2}(n)}A\cap \cdots \cap T^{-f_{k}(n)}A)>\unicode[STIX]{x1D707}(A)^{k+1}-\unicode[STIX]{x1D716}\}\end{eqnarray}$$

$\{f_{1},\ldots ,f_{k}\}$

$f_{i}:\mathbb{N}\rightarrow \mathbb{N}$

$k\leq 3$

$f_{i}(n)=if(n)$

$S$

$f(n)=q(p_{n})$

$q\in \mathbb{Z}[x]$

$q(1)$

$q(-1)=0$

$p_{n}$

$n$

$f$

$T^{q}$

$q\in \mathbb{N}$

$r\in \mathbb{Z}$

$S$

$f(n)=qn+r$

$f_{i}(n)=a_{i}n$

$a_{i}$

$S$

$k\geq 4$

$k=3$

$S$

$f_{i}$

We introduce and study skew product Smale endomorphisms over finitely irreducible shifts with countable alphabets. This case is different from the one with finite alphabets and we develop new methods. In the conformal context we prove that almost all conditional measures of equilibrium states of summable Hölder continuous potentials are exact dimensional and their dimension is equal to the ratio of (global) entropy and Lyapunov exponent. We show that the exact dimensionality of conditional measures on fibers implies global exact dimensionality of the original measure. We then study equilibrium states for skew products over expanding Markov–Rényi transformations and settle the question of exact dimensionality of such measures. We apply our results to skew products over the continued fraction transformation. This allows us to extend and improve the Doeblin–Lenstra conjecture on Diophantine approximation coefficients to a larger class of measures and irrational numbers.

We conjecture that bounded generalised polynomial functions cannot be generated by finite automata, except for the trivial case when they are ultimately periodic.

Using methods from ergodic theory, we are able to partially resolve this conjecture, proving that any hypothetical counterexample is periodic away from a very sparse and structured set. In particular, we show that for a polynomial $p(n)$ with at least one irrational coefficient (except for the constant one) and integer $m\geqslant 2$, the sequence $\lfloor p(n)\rfloor \hspace{0.2em}{\rm mod}\hspace{0.2em}m$ is never automatic.

We also prove that the conjecture is equivalent to the claim that the set of powers of an integer $k\geqslant 2$ is not given by a generalised polynomial.

A celebrated result by Bourgain and Wierdl states that ergodic averages along primes converge almost everywhere for $L^{p}$-functions, $p>1$, with a polynomial version by Wierdl and Nair. Using an anti-correlation result for the von Mangoldt function due to Green and Tao, we observe everywhere convergence of such averages for nilsystems and continuous functions.

The results of Bergelson, Host and Kra, and Leibman state that a multiple polynomial correlation sequence can be decomposed into a sum of a nilsequence (a sequence defined by evaluating a continuous function along an orbit in a nilsystem) and a null sequence (a sequence that goes to zero in density). We refine their results by proving that the null sequence goes to zero in density along polynomials evaluated at primes and along the Hardy sequence $(\lfloor n^{c}\rfloor )$. In contrast, given a rigid sequence, we construct an example of a correlation whose null sequence does not go to zero in density along that rigid sequence. As a corollary of a lemma in the proof, the formula for the pointwise ergodic average along polynomials of primes in a nilsystem is also obtained.

Erdős conjectured that for any set $A\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ with positive lower asymptotic density, there are infinite sets $B,\,C\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ such that $B\,+\,C\,\subseteq \,A$. We verify Erdős’ conjecture in the case where $A$ has Banach density exceeding $\frac{1}{2}$. As a consequence, we prove that, for $A\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ with positive Banach density (a much weaker assumption than positive lower density), we can find infinite $B,\,C\,\subseteq \,\mathbb{N}$ such that $B\,+\,C$ is contained in the union of $A$ and a translate of $A$. Both of the aforementioned results are generalized to arbitrary countable amenable groups. We also provide a positive solution to Erdős’ conjecture for subsets of the natural numbers that are pseudorandom.

Let $\Vert \cdot \Vert$ denote the distance to the nearest integer and, for a prime number $p$, let $|\cdot |_{p}$ denote the $p$-adic absolute value. Over a decade ago, de Mathan and Teulié [Problèmes diophantiens simultanés, Monatsh. Math. 143 (2004), 229–245] asked whether $\inf _{q\geqslant 1}$$q\cdot \Vert q{\it\alpha}\Vert \cdot |q|_{p}=0$ holds for every badly approximable real number ${\it\alpha}$ and every prime number $p$. Among other results, we establish that, if the complexity of the sequence of partial quotients of a real number ${\it\alpha}$ grows too rapidly or too slowly, then their conjecture is true for the pair $({\it\alpha},p)$ with $p$ an arbitrary prime.

We prove that the Return Times Theoremholds true for pairs of ${{L}^{p}}\,-\,{{L}^{q}}$ functions, whenever $\frac{1}{p}\,+\,\frac{1}{q}\,<\,\frac{3}{2}$.