Topological ergodic decompositions and applications to products of powers of a minimal transformation

Abstract

For a minimal distal flow (X, T) and a positive integern, let$X\xrightarrow{\pi }Y$ be the largest distal factor of ordern. The existence of a denseG _δ subset ω ofX is shown, such that forx ∈ ω the orbit closure of (x,x,...,x) ∈ X ⁿ⁺¹ under τ =T ×T ² ... ×T ⁿ⁺¹ is π-saturated. In fact, an analogous statement for a general minimal flow is proved in terms of its PI-tower. On the way we get some topological “ergodic” decomposition theorems.