Spectral multiplicity for powers of weakly mixing automorphisms

Abstract

We study the behavior of maximal multiplicities $mm (R^n)$ for the powers of a weakly mixing automorphism $R$. For some special infinite set $A$ we show the existence of a weakly mixing rank-one automorphism $R$ such that $mm (R^n)=n$ and $mm(R^{n+1}) =1$ for all $n\in A$. Moreover, the cardinality $cardm(R^n)$ of the set of spectral multiplicities for $R^n$ is not bounded. We have $cardm(R^{n+1})=1$ and $cardm(R^n)=2^{m(n)}$, $m(n)\to\infty$, $n\in A$. We also construct another weakly mixing automorphism $R$ with the following properties: $mm(R^{n}) =n$ for $n=1,2,3,..., 2009, 2010$ but $mm(T^{2011}) =1$, all powers $(R^{n})$ have homogeneous spectrum, and the set of limit points of the sequence $\{\frac{mm (R^n)}{n} : n\in \N \}$ is infinite.