Möbius disjointness for models of an ergodic system and beyond

Abstract

Given a topological dynamical system $(X,T)$ and an arithmetic function $\boldsymbol{u}\colon\mathbb{N}\to\mathbb{C}$, we study the strong MOMO property (relatively to $\boldsymbol{u}$) which is a strong version of $\boldsymbol{u}$-disjointness with all observable sequences in $(X,T)$. It is proved that, given an ergodic measure-preserving system $(Z,\mathcal{D},κ,R)$, the strong MOMO property (relatively to $\boldsymbol{u}$) of a uniquely ergodic model $(X,T)$ of $R$ yields all other uniquely ergodic models of $R$ to be $\boldsymbol{u}$-disjoint. It follows that all uniquely ergodic models of: ergodic unipotent diffeomorphisms on nilmanifolds, discrete spectrum automorphisms, systems given by some substitutions of constant length (including the classical Thue-Morse and Rudin-Shapiro substitutions), systems determined by Kakutani sequences are Möbius (and Liouville) disjoint. The validity of Sarnak's conjecture implies the strong MOMO property relatively to $\boldsymbolμ$ in all zero entropy systems, in particular, it makes $\boldsymbolμ$-disjointness uniform. The absence of strong MOMO property in positive entropy systems is discussed and, it is proved that, under the Chowla conjecture, a topological system has the strong MOMO property relatively to the Liouville function if and only if its topological entropy is zero.