A Banach space-valued ergodic theorem for amenable groups and applications

In this paper, we study unimodular amenable groups. The first part of the paper is devoted to results on the existence of uniform families of ε-quasi tilings for these groups. First we extend constructions of Ornstein and Weiss by quantitative estimates for the covering properties of the corresponding decompositions. Then we apply the methods developed to obtain an abstract ergodic theorem for a class of functions mapping subsets of a countable amenable group into some Banach space. This result extends significantly and complements related results found in the literature. Further, using the Lindenstrauss ergodic theorem, we link our results to classical ergodic theory. We conclude with two important applications: uniform approximation of the integrated density of states on amenable Cayley graphs and almost-sure convergence of cluster densities in an amenable bond percolation model.