Conjugacy for certain automorphisms of the one-sided shift via transducers

We address the following open problem, implicit in the 1990 article Automorphisms of one-sided subshifts of finite type of Boyle, Franks and Kitchens (BFK):

"Does there exists an element ψ  in the group of automorphisms of the one-sided shift Aut({0, 1, . . . , n−1}^ℕ, σ_n) so that all points of {0, 1, . . . , n−1}^ℕ  have orbits of length n under ψ  and ψ  is not conjugate to a permutation?"

Here, by a permutation we mean an automorphism of one-sided shift dynamical system induced by a permutation of the symbol set {0, 1, . . . , n − 1}.

We resolve this question by showing that any ψ with properties as above must be conjugate to a permutation.

Our techniques naturally extend those of BFK using the strongly synchronizing automata technology developed here and in several articles of the authors and collaborators (although, this article has been written to be largely self-contained).