Product set phenomena for measured groups

Abstract

We strengthen and extend in this paper some recent results by Di Nasso, Goldbring, Jin, Leth, Lupini and Mahlburg on piecewise syndeticity of product sets in countable amenable groups to general countable measured groups. We also address several fundamental differences between the behavior of products of ‘large’ sets in Liouville and non-Liouville measured groups. As a (very) special case of our main results, we show that if $G$ is a free group of finite rank, and $A$ and $B$ are ‘spherically large’ subsets of $G$, then there exists a finite set $F\subset G$ such that $AFB$ is thick. The position of the set $F$ is curious, but seems to be necessary; in fact, we can produce left thick sets $A,B\subset G$ such that $B$ is ‘spherically large’, but $AB$ is not piecewise syndetic. On the other hand, if $A$ is spherically large, then $AA^{-1}$ is always piecewise syndetic and piecewise left syndetic. However, contrary to what happens for amenable groups, $AA^{-1}$ may fail to be syndetic. The same phenomena occur for many other (even amenable, but non-Liouville) measured groups. Our proofs are based on some ergodic-theoretical results concerning stationary actions which should be of independent interest.