No Arabic abstract
This paper examines the possibilities of extending Cantors two arguments on the uncountable nature of the set of real numbers to one of its proper denumerable subsets: the set of rational numbers. The paper proves that, unless certain restrictive conditions are satisfied, both extensions are possible. It is therefore indispensable to prove that those conditions are in fact satisfied in Cantors theory of transfinite sets. Otherwise that theory would be inconsistent.
The inconsistencies involved in the foundation of set theory were invariably caused by infinity and self-reference; and only with the opportune axiomatic restrictions could them be obviated. Throughout history, both concepts have proved to be an exhaustible source of paradoxes and contradictions. It seems therefore legitimate to pose some questions concerning their formal consistency. This is just the objective of this paper. Starting from an extension of Cantors paradox that suggests the inconsistency of the actual infinity, the paper makes a short review of its controversial history and proposes a new way of criticism based on w-order. Self-reference is also examined from a critique perspective which includes syntactic and semantic considerations. The critique affects the formal sentence involved in Godels first incompleteness theorem and its ordinary language interpretation.
We introduce a topological object, called hairy Cantor set, which in many ways enjoys the universal features of objects like Jordan curve, Cantor set, Cantor bouquet, hairy Jordan curve, etc. We give an axiomatic characterisation of hairy Cantor sets, and prove that any two such objects in the plane are ambiently homeomorphic. Hairy Cantor sets appear in the study of the dynamics of holomorphic maps with infinitely many renormalisation structures. They are employed to link the fundamental concepts of polynomial-like renormalisation by Douady-Hubbard with the arithmetic conditions obtained by Herman-Yoccoz in the study of the dynamics of analytic circle diffeomorphisms.
A nilpotent Cantor action is a minimal equicontinuous action $Phi colon Gamma times frak{X} to frak{X}$ on a Cantor set $frak{X}$, where $Gamma$ contains a finitely-generated nilpotent subgroup $Gamma_0 subset Gamma$ of finite index. In this note, we show that these actions are distinguished among general Cantor actions: any effective action of a finitely generated group on a Cantor space, which is continuously orbit equivalent to a nilpotent Cantor action, must itself be a nilpotent Cantor action. As an application of this result, we obtain new invariants of nilpotent Cantor actions under continuous orbit equivalence.
In this paper, we consider minimal equicontinuous actions of discrete countably generated groups on Cantor sets, obtained from the arboreal representations of absolute Galois groups of fields. In particular, we study the asymptotic discriminant of these actions. The asymptotic discriminant is an invariant obtained by restricting the action to a sequence of nested clopen sets, and studying the isotropies of the enveloping group actions in such restricted systems. An enveloping (Ellis) group of such an action is a profinite group. A large class of actions of profinite groups on Cantor sets is given by arboreal representations of absolute Galois groups of fields. We show how to associate to an arboreal representation an action of a discrete group, and give examples of arboreal representations with stable and wild asymptotic discriminant.
The discriminant group of a minimal equicontinuous action of a group $G$ on a Cantor set $X$ is the subgroup of the closure of the action in the group of homeomorphisms of $X$, consisting of homeomorphisms which fix a given point. The stabilizer and the centralizer groups associated to the action are obtained as direct limits of sequences of subgroups of the discriminant group with certain properties. Minimal equicontinuous group actions on Cantor sets admit a classification by the properties of the stabilizer and centralizer direct limit groups. In this paper, we construct new families of examples of minimal equicontinuous actions on Cantor sets, which illustrate certain aspects of this classification. These examples are constructed as actions on rooted trees. The acting groups are countable subgroups of the product or of the wreath product of groups. We discuss applications of our results to the study of attractors of dynamical systems and of minimal sets of foliations.