The spectrum of completely positive entropy actions of countable amenable groups

We prove that an ergodic free action of a countable discrete amenable group with completely positive entropy has a countable Lebesgue spectrum. Our approach is based on the Rudolph-Weiss result on the equality of conditional entropies for actions of countable amenable groups with the same orbits. Relative completely positive entropy actions are also considered. An application to the entropic properties of Gaussian actions of countable discrete abelian groups is given. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science (USA).