On the sensitivity of sectional-Anosov flows (Q663246)

Sensitivity to initial conditions is an important property of dynamical systems and one of the basic ingredients of ``chaos''. A \(C^1\) vector field on a compact connected Riemannian manifold \(M\) is said to be sensitive to initial conditions if there exists \(\delta > 0\) such that for every \(x \in M\) and every neighborhood \(U\) of \(x\) there exists \(y \in U\) and \(t \geq 0\) such that the distance between \(X_t(x)\) and \(X_t(y)\) is at least \(\delta\), where \(\{ X_t \}\) denotes the flow of \(X\). The most fundamental class of examples of such vector fields is that of Anosov vector fields. It is natural to ask whether sensitivity to initial conditions holds for more general vector fields, for instance, the partially hyperbolic ones. In this paper, a vector field is called partially hyperbolic if it preserves a closed invariant set \(\Lambda\) such that over \(\Lambda\) the tangent bundle of \(M\) splits invariantly into \(E^s \oplus E^c\), such that \(E^s\) (the stable bundle) is uniformly exponentially contracted by the flow \(X_t\) and this hyperbolic action of the flow on \(E^s\) dominates its action on \(E^c\), the center bundle. On compact manifolds with boundary the above question clearly has a negative answer, as the product of the zero vector field on a torus with a contraction demonstrates. If, in addition, \(\dim E^c \geq 2\) and the determinant of \(DX_t\), for \(t \geq 0\), on any two dimensional subspace of \(E^c\) is \(\geq C e^{\lambda t}\) for some constants \(C, \lambda > 0\), then we say that the central bundle is sectionally expanding. If \(\Lambda\), as above, contains hyperbolic singularities and has a sectionally expanding central bundle, it is called a sectionally-hyperbolic set. A \(C^1\) field \(X\) whose maximal invariant set \(M(X)\) is a sectional-hyperbolic set is called a sectional-Anosov flow. Recall that \[ M(X) = \bigcup_{t \geq 0} X_t(M). \] The main result of the paper is that a sectional-Anosov flow on a compact 3-manifold \(M\) whose non-wandering set \(\Omega(X)\) is its maximal invariant set \(M(X)\), then every vector field close to \(X\) is sensitive to initial conditions. It is important to point out that unlike for Anosov flows, the property \(\Omega(X) = M(X)\) is not stable under perturbations. The proof heavily relies of the numerous previous works of these authors, especially the second one. Here is an outline of the proof. The authors first show that a flow with hyperbolic saddle-type singularities such that every point can be approximated by points whose \(\omega\)-limit set is a singularity is sensitive to initial conditions. They then introduce a so called Property (P) and show that every flow satisfying the assumptions of their main result has this property. Then, using so-called singular partitions, they show that for every sectional-Anosov flow with Property (P) on a compact 3-manifold, every point can be approximated by points whose \(\omega\)-limit set is a singularity, thus completing the proof.