Expansive flows of surfaces (Q1946307)

The paper is a systematic study of expansive flows on surfaces. The main result states that the following conditions are equivalent for a flow \(\phi\) without fixed points of index \(0\) on a compact surface: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize}\item[1.] \(\phi\) is expansive; \item[2.] \(\phi\) is nonwandering flow with finitely many fixed points and no periodic points (minimal period \(t>0\)); \item[3.] all fixed points are of saddle type and the union of their separatrices is dense in the surface. \end{itemize}} Then characterizations of expansive flows for various cases are provided. For example, it is proved that a suspension of an interval exchange transformation \(f\) is an expansive flow if \(f\) has no periodic points and the surface is not a torus. It is also shown that a compact connected surface \(S\) admits an expansive flow iff it is obtained from the sphere by attaching \(h\geq 0\) handles, \(b\geq 0\) boundaries and \(c\geq 0\) cross-cups, where the inequalities \(h>0\), \(h+b+c>1\) are satisfied.