Classifying dynamical systems by their recurrence properties

Abstract

In his seminal paper of 1967 on disjointness in topological dynamics and ergodic theory H. Furstenberg started a systematic study of transitive dynamical systems. In recent years this work served as a basis for a broad classification of dynamical systems by their recurrence properties. In this paper I describe some aspects of this new theory and its connections with combinatorics, harmonic analysis and the theory of topological groups.