It is a long-standing open question whether every Polish group that is not locally compact admits a Borel action on a standard Borel space whose associated orbit equivalence relation is not essentially countable. We answer this question positively for the class of all Polish groups that embed in the isometry group of a locally compact metric space. This class contains all non-archimedean Polish groups, for which we provide an alternative proof based on a new criterion for non-essential countability. Finally, we provide the following variant of a theorem of Solecki: every infinite-dimensional Banach space has a continuous action whose orbit equivalence relation is Borel but not essentially countable.

We prove that for $C^0$-generic homeomorphisms, acting on a compact smooth boundaryless manifold with dimension greater than one, the upper metric mean dimension with respect to the smooth metric coincides with the dimension of the manifold. As an application, we show that the upper box dimension of the set of periodic points of a $C^0$-generic homeomorphism is equal to the dimension of the manifold. In the case of continuous interval maps, we prove that each level set for the metric mean dimension with respect to the Euclidean distance is $C^0$-dense in the space of continuous endomorphisms of $[0,1]$ with the uniform topology. Moreover, the maximum value is attained at a $C^0$-generic subset of continuous interval maps and a dense subset of metrics topologically equivalent to the Euclidean distance.

Let $\mathcal {G}$ be a second countable, Hausdorff topological group. If $\mathcal {G}$ is locally compact, totally disconnected and T is an expansive automorphism then it is shown that the dynamical system $(\mathcal {G}, T)$ is topologically conjugate to the product of a symbolic full-shift on a finite number of symbols, a totally wandering, countable-state Markov shift and a permutation of a countable coset space of $\mathcal {G}$ that fixes the defining subgroup. In particular if the automorphism is transitive then $\mathcal {G}$ is compact and $(\mathcal {G}, T)$ is topologically conjugate to a full-shift on a finite number of symbols.

We consider a locally path-connected compact metric space K with finite first Betti number $\textrm {b}_1(K)$ and a flow $(K, G)$ on K such that G is abelian and all G-invariant functions $f\,{\in}\, \text{\rm C}(K)$ are constant. We prove that every equicontinuous factor of the flow $(K, G)$ is isomorphic to a flow on a compact abelian Lie group of dimension less than ${\textrm {b}_1(K)}/{\textrm {b}_0(K)}$ . For this purpose, we use and provide a new proof for Theorem 2.12 of Hauser and Jäger [Monotonicity of maximal equicontinuous factors and an application to toral flows. Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 147 (2019), 4539–4554], which states that for a flow on a locally connected compact space the quotient map onto the maximal equicontinuous factor is monotone, i.e., has connected fibers. Our alternative proof is a simple consequence of a new characterization of the monotonicity of a quotient map $p\colon K\to L$ between locally connected compact spaces K and L that we obtain by characterizing the local connectedness of K in terms of the Banach lattice $\textrm {C}(K)$ .

It is shown that the Ellis semigroup of a $\mathbb Z$ -action on a compact totally disconnected space is completely regular if and only if forward proximality coincides with forward asymptoticity and backward proximality coincides with backward asymptoticity. Furthermore, the Ellis semigroup of a $\mathbb Z$ - or $\mathbb R$ -action for which forward proximality and backward proximality are transitive relations is shown to have at most two left minimal ideals. Finally, the notion of near simplicity of the Ellis semigroup is introduced and related to the above.

We prove the Decomposability Conjecture for functions of Baire class $2$ from a Polish space to a separable metrizable space. This partially answers an important open problem in descriptive set theory.

We provide a finite basis for the class of Borel functions that are not in the first Baire class, as well as the class of Borel functions that are not $\sigma $ -continuous with closed witnesses.

We describe topological obstructions (involving periodic points, topological entropy and rotation sets) for a homeomorphism on a compact manifold to embed in a continuous flow. We prove that homeomorphisms in a $C^{0}$-open and dense set of homeomorphisms isotopic to the identity in compact manifolds of dimension at least two are not the time-1 map of a continuous flow. Such property is also true for volume-preserving homeomorphisms in compact manifolds of dimension at least five. In the case of conservative homeomorphisms of the torus $\mathbb {T}^{d} (d\ge 2)$ isotopic to identity, we describe necessary conditions for a homeomorphism to be flowable in terms of the rotation sets.

We prove that the homeomorphism relation between compact spaces can be continuously reduced to the homeomorphism equivalence relation between absolute retracts, which strengthens and simplifies recent results of Chang and Gao, and Cieśla. It follows then that the homeomorphism relation of absolute retracts is Borel bireducible with the universal orbit equivalence relation. We also prove that the homeomorphism relation between regular continua is classifiable by countable structures and hence it is Borel bireducible with the universal orbit equivalence relation of the permutation group on a countable set. On the other hand we prove that the homeomorphism relation between rim-finite metrizable compacta is not classifiable by countable structures.

For $G$ a Polish group, we consider $G$-flows which either contain a comeager orbit or have all orbits meager. We single out a class of flows, the maximally highly proximal (MHP) flows, for which this analysis is particularly nice. In the former case, we provide a complete structure theorem for flows containing comeager orbits, generalizing theorems of Melleray, Nguyen Van Thé, and Tsankov and of Ben Yaacov, Melleray, and Tsankov. In the latter, we show that any minimal MHP flow with all orbits meager has a metrizable factor with all orbits meager, thus ‘reflecting’ complicated dynamical behavior to metrizable flows. We then apply this to obtain a structure theorem for Polish groups whose universal minimal flow is distal.

Mauldin [15] proved that there is an analytic set, which cannot be represented by $B\cup X$ for some Borel set B and a subset X of a $\boldsymbol{\Sigma }^0_2$-null set, answering a question by Johnson [10]. We reprove Mauldin’s answer by a recursion-theoretical method. We also give a characterization of the Borel generated $\sigma $-ideals having approximation property under the assumption that every real is constructible, answering Mauldin’s question raised in [15].

Furstenberg has associated to every topological group $G$ a universal boundary $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G)$ . If we consider in addition a subgroup $H<G$ , the relative notion of $(G,H)$ -boundaries admits again a maximal object $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G,H)$ . In the case of discrete groups, an equivalent notion was introduced by Bearden and Kalantar (Topological boundaries of unitary representations. Preprint, 2019, arXiv:1901.10937v1) as a very special instance of their constructions. However, the analogous universality does not always hold, even for discrete groups. On the other hand, it does hold in the affine reformulation in terms of convex compact sets, which admits a universal simplex $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E5}(G,H)$ , namely the simplex of measures on $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G,H)$ . We determine the boundary $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}(G,H)$ in a number of cases, highlighting properties that might appear unexpected.

In this paper we study topological properties of the right action by translation of the Weyl chamber flow on the space of Weyl chambers. We obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for topological mixing.

We introduce the notions ‘virtual automorphism group’ of a minimal flow and ‘semiregular flow’ and investigate the relationship between the virtual and actual group of automorphisms.

In this article, we calculate the Ellis semigroup of a certain class of constant-length substitutions. This generalizes a result of Haddad and Johnson [IP cluster points, idempotents, and recurrent sequences. Topology Proc. 22 (1997) 213–226] from the binary case to substitutions over arbitrarily large finite alphabets. Moreover, we provide a class of counterexamples to one of the propositions in their paper, which is central to the proof of their main theorem. We give an alternative approach to their result, which centers on the properties of the Ellis semigroup. To do this, we also show a new way to construct an almost automorphic–isometric tower to the maximal equicontinuous factor of these systems, which gives a more particular approach than the one given by Dekking [The spectrum of dynamical systems arising from substitutions of constant length. Z. Wahrscheinlichkeitstheor. Verw. Geb. 41(3) (1977/78) 221–239].

We begin by defining a homoclinic class for homeomorphisms. Then we prove that if a topological homoclinic class Λ associated with an area-preserving homeomorphism f on a surface M is topologically hyperbolic (i.e. has the shadowing and expansiveness properties), then Λ = M and f is an Anosov homeomorphism.

We introduce the notions of directional dynamical cubes and directional regionally proximal relation defined via these cubes for a minimal $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$ -system $(X,T_{1},\ldots ,T_{d})$ . We study the structural properties of systems that satisfy the so-called unique closing parallelepiped property and we characterize them in several ways. In the distal case, we build the maximal factor of a $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$ -system $(X,T_{1},\ldots ,T_{d})$ that satisfies this property by taking the quotient with respect to the directional regionally proximal relation. Finally, we completely describe distal $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$ -systems that enjoy the unique closing parallelepiped property and provide explicit examples.

In this paper, it is shown that if a dynamical system is null and distal, then it is equicontinuous. It turns out that a null system with closed proximal relation is mean equicontinuous. As a direct application, it follows that a null dynamical system with dense minimal points is also mean equicontinuous. Meanwhile, a distal system with trivial $\text{Ind}_{\text{fip}}$-pairs and a non-trivial regionally proximal relation of order $\infty$ are constructed.

We construct a multiply Xiong chaotic set with full Hausdorff dimension everywhere that is contained in some multiply proximal cell for the full shift over finite symbols and the Gauss system, respectively.

In this paper we give an answer to Furstenberg’s problem on topological disjointness. Namely, we show that a transitive system $(X,T)$ is disjoint from all minimal systems if and only if $(X,T)$ is weakly mixing and there is some countable dense subset $D$ of $X$ such that for any minimal system $(Y,S)$ , any point $y\in Y$ and any open neighbourhood $V$ of $y$ , and for any non-empty open subset $U\subset X$ , there is $x\in D\cap U$ such that $\{n\in \mathbb{Z}_{+}:T^{n}x\in U,S^{n}y\in V\}$ is syndetic. Some characterization for the general case is also given. By way of application we show that if a transitive system $(X,T)$ is disjoint from all minimal systems, then so are $(X^{n},T^{(n)})$ and $(X,T^{n})$ for any $n\in \mathbb{N}$ . It turns out that a transitive system $(X,T)$ is disjoint from all minimal systems if and only if the hyperspace system $(K(X),T_{K})$ is disjoint from all minimal systems.