On the failure of Ornstein theory in the finitary category

We show the invalidity of finitary counterparts for three classification theorems: The preservation of being a Bernoulli shift through factors, Sinai’s factor theorem, and the weak Pinsker property. We construct a finitary factor of an i.i.d. process which is not finitarily isomorphic to an i.i.d. process, showing that being finitarily Bernoulli is not preserved through finitary factors. This refutes a conjecture of M. Smorodinsky [Finitary isomorphism of m m -dependent processes, Amer. Math. Soc., Birkhauser, Providence, RI, 1992, pp. 373–376], which was first suggested by D. Rudolph [A characterization of those processes finitarily isomorphic to a Bernoulli shift, Birkhäuser, Boston, Mass., 1981, pp. 1–64]. We further show that any ergodic system is isomorphic to a process none of whose finitary factors are i.i.d. processes, and in particular, there is no general finitary Sinai’s factor theorem for ergodic processes. Another consequence of this result is the invalidity of a finitary weak Pinsker property, answering a question of G. Pete and T. Austin [Math. Inst. Hautes Études Sci. 128 (2018), 1–119].