On the dynamics of G-solenoids. Applications to Delone sets

A G-solenoid is a laminated space whose leaves are copies of a single Lie group G and whose transversals are totally disconnected sets. It inherits a G-action and can be considered as a dynamical system. Free Z d -actions on the Cantor set as well as a large class of tiling spaces possess such a structure of G-solenoids. For a large class of Lie groups, we show that a G-solenoid can be seen as a projective limit of branched manifolds modeled on G. This allows us to give a topological description of the transverse invariant measures associated with a G-solenoid in terms of a positive cone in the projective limit of the dim(G)-homology groups of these branched manifolds. In particular, we exhibit a simple criterion implying unique ergodicity. Particular attention is paid to the case when the Lie group G is the group of affine orientation-preserving isometries of the Euclidean space or its subgroup of translations.