O ct 2 00 4 Topologies on the group of Borel automorphisms of a standard Borel space

The paper is devoted to the study of topologies on the group Aut(X, B) of all Borel automorphisms of a standard Borel space (X, B). Several topologies are introduced and all possible relations between them are found. One of these topologies, τ , is a direct analogue of the uniform topology widely used in ergodic theory. We consider the most natural subsets of Aut(X, B) and find their closures. In particular, we describe closures of subsets formed by odometers, periodic, aperiodic, incompressible, and smooth automorphisms with respect to the defined topologies. It is proved that the set of periodic Borel automorphisms is dense in Aut(X, B) (Rokhlin lemma) with respect to τ. It is shown that the τ-closure of odometers (and of rank 1 Borel automor-phisms) coincides with the set of all aperiodic automorphisms. For every ape-riodic automorphism T ∈ Aut(X, B), the concept of a Borel-Bratteli diagram is defined and studied. It is proved that every aperiodic Borel automorphism T is isomorphic to the Vershik transformation acting on the space of infinite paths of an ordered Borel-Bratteli diagram. Several applications of this result are given.