English

Haar null sets without $G_\delta$ hulls

Logic 2016-01-07 v4 Dynamical Systems

Abstract

Let GG be an abelian Polish group, e.g. a separable Banach space. A subset XGX \subset G is called Haar null (in the sense of Christensen) if there exists a Borel set BXB \supset X and a Borel probability measure μ\mu on GG such that μ(B+g)=0\mu(B+g)=0 for every gGg \in G. The term shy is also commonly used for Haar null, and co-Haar null sets are often called prevalent. Answering an old question of Mycielski we show that if GG is not locally compact then there exists a Borel Haar null set that is not contained in any GδG_\delta Haar null set. We also show that GδG_\delta can be replaced by any other class of the Borel hierarchy, which implies that the additivity of the σ\sigma-ideal of Haar null sets is ω1\omega_1. The definition of a generalised Haar null set is obtained by replacing the Borelness of BB in the above definition by universal measurability. We give an example of a generalised Haar null set that is not Haar null, more precisely we construct a coanalytic generalised Haar null set without a Borel Haar null hull. This solves Problem GP from Fremlin's problem list. Actually, all our results readily generalise to all Polish groups that admit a two-sided invariant metric.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1312.7667,
  title  = {Haar null sets without $G_\delta$ hulls},
  author = {Márton Elekes and Zoltán Vidnyánszky},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1312.7667},
  year   = {2016}
}

Comments

10 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-22T02:36:45.514Z