Approximate transitivity property and Lebesgue spectrum

Exploiting a spectral criterion for a system not to be AT we give some new examples of zero entropy systems without the AT property. Our examples include those with finite spectral multiplicity – in particular we show that the system arising from the Rudin-Shapiro substitution is not AT. We also show that some nil-rotations on a quotient of the Heisenberg group as well as some (generalized) Gaussian systems are not AT. All known examples of non AT-automorphisms contain a Lebesgue component in the spectrum.