Tropical Limits of Probability Spaces, Part I: The Intrinsic Kolmogorov-Sinai Distance and the Asymptotic Equipartition Property for Configurations

The entropy of a finite probability space $X$ measures the observable cardinality of large independent products $X^{\otimes n}$ of the probability space. If two probability spaces $X$ and $Y$ have the same entropy, there is an almost measure-preserving bijection between large parts of $X^{\otimes n}$ and $Y^{\otimes n}$. In this way, $X$ and $Y$ are asymptotically equivalent. It turns out to be challenging to generalize this notion of asymptotic equivalence to configurations of probability spaces, which are collections of probability spaces with measure-preserving maps between some of them. In this article we introduce the intrinsic Kolmogorov-Sinai distance on the space of configurations of probability spaces. Concentrating on the large-scale geometry we pass to the asymptotic Kolmogorov-Sinai distance. It induces an asymptotic equivalence relation on sequences of configurations of probability spaces. We will call the equivalence classes \emph{tropical probability spaces}. In this context we prove an Asymptotic Equipartition Property for configurations. It states that tropical configurations can always be approximated by homogeneous configurations. In addition, we show that the solutions to certain Information-Optimization problems are Lipschitz-con\-tinuous with respect to the asymptotic Kolmogorov-Sinai distance. It follows from these two statements that in order to solve an Information-Optimization problem, it suffices to consider homogeneous configurations. Finally, we show that spaces of trajectories of length $n$ of certain stochastic processes, in particular stationary Markov chains, have a tropical limit.Comment: Comment to version 2: Fixed typos, a calculation mistake in Lemma 5.1 and its consequences in Proposition 5.2 and Theorem 6.

A multi-dimensional Szemer\'edi theorem for the primes via a correspondence principle

We establish a version of the Furstenberg-Katznelson multi-dimensional Szemer\'edi in the primes ${\mathcal P} := \{2,3,5,\ldots\}$, which roughly speaking asserts that any dense subset of ${\mathcal P}^d$ contains constellations of any given shape. Our arguments are based on a weighted version of the Furstenberg correspondence principle, relative to a weight which obeys an infinite number of pseudorandomness (or "linear forms") conditions, combined with the main results of a series of papers by Green and the authors which establish such an infinite number of pseudorandomness conditions for a weight associated with the primes. The same result, by a rather different method, has been simultaneously established by Cook, Magyar, and Titichetrakun.Comment: 20 pages, no figures. Submitted, Israel J. Math. Several suggestions of an anonymous referee have been implemente

On the computation of rational points of a hypersurface over a finite field

We design and analyze an algorithm for computing rational points of hypersurfaces defined over a finite field based on searches on "vertical strips", namely searches on parallel lines in a given direction. Our results show that, on average, less than two searches suffice to obtain a rational point. We also analyze the probability distribution of outputs, using the notion of Shannon entropy, and prove that the algorithm is somewhat close to any "ideal" equidistributed algorithm.Comment: 31 pages, 5 table