Rate distortion dimension and ergodic decomposition for $\mathbb{R}^d$-actions

Abstract

Rate distortion dimension describes the theoretical limit of lossy data compression methods as the distortion bound goes to zero. It was originally introduced in the context of information theory, and recently it was discovered that it has an intimate connection to Gromov's theory of mean dimension of dynamical systems. This paper studies the behavior of rate distortion dimension of $\mathbb{R}^d$-actions under ergodic decomposition. Our main theorems provide natural convexity and concavity of upper and lower rate distortion dimensions under convex combination of invariant probability measures. We also present examples which clarify the validity and limitations of the theorems.