Friday, May 6, 4-5 pm, MW 154
Abstract: The notion of a distal system goes back to Hilbert (1900) in an attempt to give topological characterization of the concept of a rigid group of motions. In this talk, I will present the definition of distal systems and prove that they have zero entropy (Parry, 1968). The proof is based on a useful characterization of distal systems, obtained by Ellis in 1958.