Chain recurrence and attraction in non-compact spaces

Abstract

AbstractIn the study of a dynamical systemf:X→Xgenerated by a continuous mapfon a compact metric spaceX, thechain recurrent setis an object of fundamental interest. This set was defined by C. Conley, who showed that it has two rather different looking, but equivalent, definitions: one given in terms of ‘approximate orbits’ through individual points (pseudo-orbits, or ε-chains), and the other given in terms of the global structure of the class of ‘attractors’ and ‘basins of attraction’ off. The first of these definitions generalizes directly to dynamical systems on any metric space, compact or not. The main purpose of this paper is to extend the second definition to non-compact spaces in such a way that it remains equivalent to the first.