English

Operator ergodic theorems with Möbius "weights"

Dynamical Systems 2026-07-17 v1

Abstract

Motivated by Sarnak's conjecture in topological dynamics for the M\"obius function μ\mu, we study, for a power-bounded TT on a Banach space EE, the weak convergence ()1Nn=1Nμ(n)Tnv0 weakly vE. (*) \qquad \qquad \frac1N\sum_{n=1}^N \mu(n)T^nv \to 0 \text{ weakly } \forall v\in E. For that, we introduce a notion of dynamical entropy for operators, which we denote htop(T)h^*_{top}(T), and show that if Sarnak's conjecture is true, then htop(T)=0h^*_{top}(T)=0 implies the desired convergence (*). We conclude an equivalent operator formulation of Sarnak's conjecture. For several classes of operators we prove that (*) holds, and that htop(T)=0h^*_{top}(T)=0.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.15960,
  title  = {Operator ergodic theorems with Möbius "weights"},
  author = {El Houcein El Abdalaoui and Michael Lin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.15960},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Dedicated to the memory of Alexandra Bellow. 41 pages, 97 references, 4 appendices; Appendix C by C. Cuny. Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome