Kazhdan constants, continuous probability measures with large Fourier coefficients and rigidity sequences

Abstract

Exploiting a construction of rigidity sequences for weakly mixing dynamical systems by Fayad and Thouvenot, we show that for every integers $p_{1},\dots,p_{r}$ there exists a continuous probability measure $\mu $ on the unit circle $\mathbb{T}$ such that \[ \inf_{k_{1}\ge 0,\dots,k_{r}\ge 0}|\widehat{\mu }(p_{1}^{k_{1}}\dots p_{r}^{k_{r}})|>0. \] This results applies in particular to the Furstenberg set $F=\{2^{k}3^{k'}\,;\,k\ge 0,\ k'\ge 0\}$, and disproves a 1988 conjecture of Lyons inspired by Furstenberg's famous $\times 2$-$\times 3$ conjecture. We also estimate the modified Kazhdan constant of $F$ and obtain general results on rigidity sequences which allow us to retrieve essentially all known examples of such sequences.