The dynamical proof of Hindman's theorem gives the following result. The Hindman theorem asserts that every finite coloring of the positive integers admits an infinite strictly increasing sequence for which all nonempty finite sums of distinct terms have one color. We will in fact arrange , so all these sums also have unique representations.
Extend the given coloring arbitrarily to a point , retaining the prescribed colors at every positive coordinate. Let be its forward orbit closure under the left shift. The product topology makes a compact metric space, and the left shift is a continuous map. There is a nonempty minimal subsystem : order the nonempty closed forward-invariant subsets by reverse inclusion, use compactness and the finite intersection property to intersect any chain, and apply the Zorn lemma. Minimality also implies . The result permitted in the question now supplies a minimal point proximal to .
We need the joint return lemma for a proximal minimal pair, which we prove here. It suffices to consider an open neighborhood of in . Choose an open neighborhood of with . Every forward orbit in meets , and a finite subcover of on supplies a bound on the needed return index. For a compatible metric , choose smaller than the distance from to when the latter is nonempty. By uniform continuity of the finitely many maps , , some ensures
Proximality supplies arbitrarily large with . To see that the times can be large under the definition using an infimum over , either , in which case this is automatic, or injectivity of the left shift makes every finite collection of distances strictly positive, so a sufficiently smaller proximal distance occurs beyond that collection. Some has . Then also. Hence arbitrarily large positive satisfy
This uses the minimal point property for bounded returns and proximality for closeness; closeness alone would not guarantee a return near .
Put . Inductively, let , where denotes the finite-sums set, and maintain
The initial condition at is just ; no condition on is required. The cylinder set is a neighborhood of . Use the proved joint return lemma to choose with both and in . All new sums belong to , and the old sums remain in , so both inductive conditions persist. Every nonzero sum is positive, where agrees with the original coloring. Therefore
This proves the Hindman theorem using only the permitted proximal-minimal existence result and the compactness and return arguments supplied above.
Use the product topology on , with discrete, and the left shift . A basic cylinder set specifies finitely many coordinates. This is a compact metric space, and is a homeomorphism. Write for the forward orbit closure. A minimal point means that is a minimal dynamical system, equivalently that every point of has a dense forward orbit in ; it need not be a fixed point.
There is a convention needed in the source: the bounded-gaps property concerns every finite integer interval , hence every finite word over an alphabet. Literally allowing would make the displayed condition impossible for finite , although a constant coloring is a minimal point. Under the standard finite-word interpretation, the property is precisely uniform recurrence.
Suppose first that is a minimal dynamical system. Its nonempty compact forward-invariant subset must equal . As the ambient left shift is invertible, all integer translates of belong to . Let have length , and let . This is a nonempty clopen set. Each forward orbit in meets , so covers . By compactness, finitely many suffice; let be the largest index in this finite cover. For any integer , the point lies in , so some satisfies . The prescribed word therefore occurs at positions , entirely inside . Taking proves the bounded-gaps property for every interval of length at least .
Conversely suppose is uniformly recurrent. Every finite word from any integer translate of occurs arbitrarily far to the right, so every such translate belongs to . Moreover, the property that every length- block contains a specified word of passes to every : a finite block of is a limit of blocks of forward translates of , and the finite discrete alphabet forces eventual exact agreement on that block. Given , look for its word inside . An occurrence starts at for some , so agrees with on . Taking for arbitrarily large proves that belongs to the forward orbit closure of every . That closure is a closed forward-invariant subset of , so it also contains every forward translate of and hence all of . Every forward orbit is therefore dense in , proving
The same conclusion holds if orbit closure is defined using all integer iterates: the bounded-gaps condition makes the forward and two-sided closures equal.
For finite , choose a root and an ordering of the other graph vertices. Begin with a tree consisting only of . At each stage take the first graph vertex not already in the tree, run an independent simple random walk from it until its first hit of the existing tree, erase the loops chronologically, and add the resulting graph path. In chronological loop erasure, revisiting a graph vertex already in the current list deletes all list entries after that graph vertex; otherwise append the new graph vertex. The retained final graph path is simple, with new internal graph vertices and exactly one endpoint in the old tree. Adding it therefore preserves connectedness and creates no graph cycle. Graph vertices already included are skipped. On a finite connected graph each walk hits the existing tree almost surely; after finitely many attachments all graph vertices are present.
The Wilson algorithm theorem states that this tree is a uniform spanning tree, independently of the chosen root and order. The required hypotheses here are an undirected connected finite graph and transition probabilities proportional to conductance; unit conductances give simple random walk and the uniform law. This is the sampling result being described, not a claim that arbitrary walk transition probabilities would produce a uniform tree.
For an infinite connected locally finite recurrent graph, choose a fixed finite root and enumerate all graph vertices. A connected locally finite graph is countable, since its finite-radius balls are finite. Run the same algorithm successively. Recurrence and irreducibility imply that a walk from any graph vertex hits almost surely, hence hits the current tree. Every attached graph path is therefore finite. The countable intersection of these probability-one events has probability one, and the increasing union is an acyclic connected subgraph containing all graph vertices: each graph vertex receives a finite route to .
This gives the uniform spanning tree of a recurrent infinite graph. It is not a uniform counting measure on all infinite spanning trees. Equivalently, its joint probability distributions on finite collections of edges are the common limits of uniform spanning trees along any graph exhaustion, using the approximations defining the free uniform spanning forest and the wired uniform spanning forest. To check that equivalence, fix a finite edge set and run the chosen enumeration through a finite prefix containing all its endpoints. Once those graph vertices are in the tree, later attachments cannot add an edge with both endpoints already included, so membership of is settled permanently. Only finitely many random walks have been used; each has a finite trajectory almost surely. All their visited graph vertices and all their graph neighbours lie in a sufficiently large exhaustion set. Couple finite-volume and infinite-volume walks with the same steps there. Whether the exterior is deleted or wired to one boundary graph vertex, these initial trajectories and their loop erasures then agree. This proves convergence of the probabilities of cylinder sets determined by those edges.
The limiting law is unchanged by the root and ordering because the laws on finite graphs have this invariance. The same coupling shows that changing the exhaustion also leaves the law unchanged. Thus
The result is a single spanning tree because the graph is recurrent. On a transient graph, infinite-volume spanning-tree limits may instead be uniform spanning forests; recurrence cannot be omitted from this conclusion.
Construct one infinite binary sequence by concatenating every binary word of length one, then every word of length two, then every word of length three, and so on, in lexicographic order within each length. Every finite binary word occurs somewhere in .
Given any target sequence and any , choose such that . The word occurs in , beginning after some symbols. Thus agrees with in its first positions, and the prescribed metric gives
Every open open ball about every point therefore meets the forward orbit of . This forward orbit is dense in . The argument identifies finite-prefix cylinder sets as arbitrarily small neighborhoods in this metric; no binary-expansion convention for real numbers is needed.
Let and give each factor of the usual topology of the real line. The familiar standard basis vectors extend to unit sequences with when and zero otherwise. Their finite linear combinations are exactly the finitely supported sequences, rather than all of .
For every fixed coordinate , for all . Therefore in the product topology. More directly, any basic cylinder set containing zero contains every with : all of its tested coordinates are then zero. The moving unit entry escapes every fixed finite collection of observations.
Figure 1.
A moving unit entry escapes each fixed finite-coordinate cylinder
. Only coordinates 1 and 3 are tested in the displayed cylinder, with values required to lie between minus one-half and one-half. All later coordinates remain unrestricted. The finite display illustrates the pattern; the threshold argument in the text applies to every finite coordinate set. Details.
In the l-infinity sequence space of bounded real sequences, however,
Thus the same sequence does not converge to zero in the supremum norm. Here the comparison is between the subspace topology inherited from the product topology and the norm topology on . The supremum norm is not a finite-valued norm on all of , which also contains unbounded sequences. In the box topology on , the neighborhood of zero excludes every , so is not a convergent sequence with limit zero there either.
Uniform recurrence Created 2026-10-05 Updated 2026-10-14
A two-sided sequence over a finite alphabet is uniformly recurrent if every finite word over an alphabet occurring in it occurs with bounded gaps. More precisely, for each such word some ensures that every length- interval contains a complete occurrence. This is equivalent to being a minimal point of the full shift: a finite cover of the orbit closure by preimages of a word's cylinder set bounds its return gaps; conversely, bounded gaps pass to all points of the orbit closure and make every forward orbit dense there. The property concerns finite words, not infinite integer intervals.
On this sum is a metric, since each summand obeys the triangle inequality and a zero sum forces coordinatewise equality. A prefix cylinder set fixing the first coordinates contains the open ball of radius about each of its points and has diameter at most . These bounds show that the metric topology equals the prefix cylinder set topology, the usual Cantor space topology.
Winning-position attractor in an infinite game Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-14
Start with positions whose entire extension cylinder set lies in the winning open set. At each successor stage add I-positions with some successor already present and II-positions with every successor already present; take unions at limit ordinals. The stable set is the least fixed point of this order-preserving operation. The first entry ordinal supplies a strictly decreasing rank until the winning prefix is reached.