Three- and four-dimensional cooperative systems with every equilibrium stable (Q1342471)

A \(C^ 1\) vector field \(F : X \to \mathbb{R}^ n\) is called cooperative if its Jacobian matrix, \(DF(x)\), has nonnegative off-diagonal entries. A multidimensional system of ordinary differential equations of the form \(x' = F(x)\) with \(x \in X \subset \mathbb{R}^ n\) is called a cooperative system whenever \(F : X \to \mathbb{R}^ n\) is cooperative. In his earlier work, the author proved that, for any dimension \(n\), an equilibrium point \(p\) of a cooperative system is globally asymptotically stable if the equilibrium set \(E = \{p\}\), and every forward semi-orbit has compact closure in \(X\) [the author, Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 112, 803-806 (1991; Zbl 0753.34034) and On the global stability of cooperative systems, Bull. Lond. Math. Soc. (to appear)]. In this paper, the author obtains a similar global convergence result for cooperative systems of ordinary differential equations. However, the equilibrium set have more than one point. To be more precise, the author proved the following: Let \(n \leq 4\) and \(X \subset \mathbb{R}^ n\) be a \(p\)-convex and open set such that the greatest lower bound and the least upper bound of any compact set in \(X\) belongs to \(X\) (a set \(X \subset \mathbb{R}^ n\) is \(p\)-convex if it contains the line segment with endpoints \(a,b\) provided \(a \in X\), \(b \in X\) and \(a < b)\). Suppose \(F : X \to \mathbb{R}^ n\) is cooperative. If every equilibrium \(p \in E\) is Lyapunov stable and every forward semi-orbit has compact closure in \(X\), then every forward semi-orbit in \(X\) converges. That is, the omega limit set of \(x\) is a singleton for each \(x \in X\).