The structure of hyperfinite Borel equivalence relations

Abstract

We study the structure of the equivalence relations induced by the orbits of a single Borel automorphism on a standard Borel space. We show that any two such equivalence relations which are not smooth, i.e., do not admit Borel selectors, are Borel embeddable into each other. (This utilizes among other things work of Effros and Weiss.) Using this and also results of Dye, Varadarajan, and recent work of Nadkarni, we show that the cardinality of the set of ergodic invariant measures is a complete invariant for Borel isomorphism of aperiodic nonsmooth such equivalence relations. In particular, since the only possible such cardinalities are the finite ones, countable infinity, and the cardinality of the continuum, there are exactly countably infinitely many isomorphism types. Canonical examples of each type are also discussed.

Additional Information

© 1994 American Mathematical Society. Received by the editors September 24, 1991. Research of the authors was partially supported by NSF grants DMS-9158092 (R.D.), DMS-9007808 (S.J.) and DMS-9020153 (A.S.K.).

Attached Files

Published - 2154620.pdf

Files

Additional details