Equipped graded graphs, projective limits of simplices, and their boundaries

In this paper, we develop a theory of equipped graded graphs (or Bratteli diagrams) and an alternative theory of projective limits of finite-dimensional simplices. An equipment is an additional structure on the graph, namely, a system of “cotransition” probabilities on the set of its paths. The main problem is to describe all probability measures on the path space of the graph with given cotransition probabilities; it goes back to the problem, posed by E. B. Dynkin in the 1960s, of describing exit and entrance boundaries for Markov chains. The most important example is the problem of describing all central measures; those of describing states on AF-algebras or characters on locally finite groups can be reduced to it. We suggest an unification of the whole theory, an interpretation of the notions of Martin, Choquet, and Dynkin boundaries in terms of equipped graded graphs and in terms of the theory of projective limits of simplices. In the last section, we study the new notion of “standardness" of projective limits of simplices and of equipped Bratteli diagrams, as well as the notion of "lacunarization.”