The mathematical research of William Parry FRS

In this article we survey the mathematical research of the late William (Bill) Parry, FRS

Discrete dynamical systems in group theory

In this expository paper we describe an unifying approach for many known entropies in Mathematics. First we recall the notion of semigroup entropy h_S in the category S of normed semigroups and contractive homomorphisms, recalling also its properties. For a specific category X and a functor F from X to S, we have the entropy h_F, defined by the composition of h_S with F, which automatically satisfies the same properties proved for h_S. This general scheme permits to obtain many of the known entropies as h_F, for appropriately chosen categories X and functors F. In the last part we recall the definition and the fundamental properties of the algebraic entropy for group endomorphisms, noting how its deeper properties depend on the specific setting. Finally we discuss the notion of growth for flows of groups, comparing it with the classical notion of growth for finitely generated groups

Orbit Equivalence and Measured Group Theory

We give a survey of various recent developments in orbit equivalence and measured group theory. This subject aims at studying infinite countable groups through their measure preserving actions.Comment: 2010 Hyderabad ICM proceeding; Dans Proceedings of the International Congress of Mathematicians, Hyderabad, India - International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM), Hyderabad : India (2010

Arithmetic Dynamics

This survey paper is aimed to describe a relatively new branch of symbolic dynamics which we call Arithmetic Dynamics. It deals with explicit arithmetic expansions of reals and vectors that have a "dynamical" sense. This means precisely that they (semi-) conjugate a given continuous (or measure-preserving) dynamical system and a symbolic one. The classes of dynamical systems and their codings considered in the paper involve: (1) Beta-expansions, i.e., the radix expansions in non-integer bases; (2) "Rotational" expansions which arise in the problem of encoding of irrational rotations of the circle; (3) Toral expansions which naturally appear in arithmetic symbolic codings of algebraic toral automorphisms (mostly hyperbolic). We study ergodic-theoretic and probabilistic properties of these expansions and their applications. Besides, in some cases we create "redundant" representations (those whose space of "digits" is a priori larger than necessary) and study their combinatorics.Comment: 45 pages in Latex + 3 figures in ep