Simple Toeplitz subshifts: combinatorial properties and uniformity of cocycles

Abstract

We investigate combinatorial properties of aperiodic simple Toeplitz subshifts, as well as spectral properties of Jacobi operators defined by them. More precisely, we derive explicit formulas for complexity, palindrome complexity and, for sufficiently large word length, repetitivity. In addition we give a complete description of the de Bruijn graphs. We characterise alpha-repetitivity and, based on a work by Liu and Qu from 2011, the Boshernitzan condition. These combinatorial results can also be found in [arXiv:1801.08778]. Regarding the Jacobi operators, we show that they have empty pure point spectrum for almost all elements in the subshift. This generalises a result of Grigorchuk, Lenz and Nagnibeda from 2018. In addition the spectrum is shown to be a Cantor set of Lebesgue measure zero. In fact we prove the stronger statement that every locally constant SL(2,R)-cocycle is uniform. To do so, we use the so-called leading sequence condition for subshifts, which stems from a collaboration with Grigorchuk, Lenz and Nagnibeda, see [arXiv:1906.01898]. This approach allows us to establish uniformity of cocycles for simple Toeplitz subshifts and Sturmian subshifts in a unified way. An appendix briefly reviews the connection between Jacobi operators on simple Toeplitz subshifts and Laplacians on Schreier graphs of self-similar groups.