On the first integral conjecture of René Thom (Q950543): Difference between revisions

A well-known in the theory of dynamical systems result attributed to the 20th century mathematician René Thom states that, for \(1\leq r\leq\infty,\) \(C^{r}\)-generically vector fields on \(d\)-dimensional compact, smooth, connected manifolds without boundary do not admit nontrivial continuous first integrals. The authors use a recent nonsmooth extension of the Sard theorem [\textit{J. Bolte, A. Daniilidis, A. Lewis} and \textit{M. Shiota}, SIAM J. Optim. 18, No. 2, 556--572 (2007; Zbl 1142.49006) and Ann. Pol. Math. 87, 13-25 (2005; Zbl 1090.35033)] to establish the validity of Thom's conjecture for locally Lipschitz first integrals, interpreting genericity in the \(C^{1}\) sense and understanding nontrivial as ``being essentially definable with respect to an \(o\)-minimal approximation.'' Formal proofs of Thom's conjecture known in the literature rely on the Sard theorem and therefore require that first integrals belong to the class \(C^{k}\) with \(k\geq d.\)