Abstract. We develop a systematic approach to the study of independence in topological dynamics with an emphasis on combinatorial methods. One of our principal aims is to combinatorialize the local analysis of topological entropy and related mixing properties. We also reframe our theory of dynamical independence in terms of tensor products and thereby expand its scope to C

Abstract. Recently Lewis Bowen introduced a notion of entropy for measure-preserving actions of a countable sofic group on a standard probability space admitting a generating partition with finite entropy. By applying an operator algebra perspective we develop a more general approach to sofic entropy which produces both measure and topological dynamical invariants, and we establish the variational principle in this context. In the case of residually finite groups we use the variational principle to compute the topological entropy of principal algebraic actions whose defining group ring element is invertible in the full group C * -algebra.

In a previous paper the authors developed an operator-algebraic approach to Lewis Bowen's sofic measure entropy that yields invariants for actions of countable sofic groups by homeomorphisms on a compact metrizable space and by measure-preserving transformations on a standard probability space. We show here that these measure and topological entropy invariants both coincide with their classical counterparts when the acting group is amenable.

We construct explicitly some analytic families ofétale (ϕ, Γ)-modules, which give rise to analytic families of 2-dimensional crystalline representations. As an application of our constructions, we verify some conjectures of Breuil on the reduction modulo p of those representations, and extend some results (of Deligne, Edixhoven, Fontaine and Serre) on the representations arising from modular forms.Résumé. -Nous construisons explicitement des familles analytiques de (ϕ, Γ)-moduleś etales, qui donnent lieuà des familles analytiques de représentations cristallines de dimension 2. Comme application de nos constructions, nous vérifions des conjectures de Breuil quant a la réduction modulo p de ces représentations, et nousétendons des résultats (de Deligne, Edixhoven, Fontaine et Serre) sur les représentations associées aux formes modulaires.

We give algebraic characterizations for expansiveness of algebraic actions of countable groups. The notion of p-expansiveness is introduced for algebraic actions, and we show that for countable amenable groups, a finitely presented algebraic action is 1-expansive exactly when it has finite entropy. We also study the local entropy theory for actions of countable amenable groups on compact groups by automorphisms, and show that the IE group determines the Pinsker factor for such actions. For an expansive algebraic action of a polycyclic-by-finite group on X, it is shown that the entropy of the action is equal to the entropy of the induced action on the Pontryagin dual of the homoclinic group, the homoclinic group is a dense subgroup of the IE group, the homoclinic group is nontrivial exactly when the action has positive entropy, and the homoclinic group is dense in X exactly when the action has completely positive entropy.