Pseudotrajectories generated by a discretization of a parabolic equation (Q1916002)

The authors consider a semi-implicit discretization \(\varphi:\mathbb{R}^N\to \mathbb{R}^N\) of a parabolic equation \[ {{\partial u}\over{\partial t}}={{\partial^2u}\over{\partial x^2}}+f(u), \] where \(x\in[0,1]\), \(t>0\), with Dirichlet boundary conditions and a given initial value. It is known that if \(f\) is \(C^1\), has bounded derivative and the discretization step is small then the discretization \(\varphi\) is a diffeomorphism of class \(c^1\). The authors show that under these assumptions the diffeomorphism is generically Morse-Smale. Then they show that the attractor of \(\varphi\) may be approximated in the Hausdorff metric by pseudotrajectories of \(\varphi\), i.e. sequences of vectors in \(\mathbb{R}^N\) which do not lie precisely on the trajectory due to, for instance, computer generated round-off errors.