Jordan decomposition and the recurrent set of flows of automorphisms (Q1995556)

The paper is devoted to a Jordan decomposition of linear vector fields and to the description of their recurrent sets. A vector field \(\mathcal X\) on a compact Lie group \(G\) is {linear} if its flow \(\{\varphi_t\}_{t\in \mathbb R}\) is included as a one-parameter subgroup in the authomorphism group \(\mathrm{Aut}G\), \((d\varphi^{\mathcal X}_t)_e = e^{t\mathcal X}\). As a linear operator, the Lyapunov spectrum of \(\mathcal X\) is decomposed into the sum of three parts: elliptic, hyperbolic and nilpotent. A {Jordan decomposition} of \(\mathcal X\) is the sum \(\mathcal X = \mathcal X_\mathrm{ell} + \mathcal X_\mathrm{hyp} + \mathcal X_\mathrm{nil}\) of of commuting parts: the elliptic \(\mathcal X_\mathrm{ell}\), the hyperbolic \(\mathcal X_\mathrm{hyp}\) and the nilpotent \(\mathcal X_\mathrm{nil}\) with the corresponding flows \(\{\varphi^\mathrm{ell}_t\}_{t\in\mathbb R}\), \(\{\varphi^\mathrm{hyp}_t\}_{t\in\mathbb R}\) and \(\{\varphi^\mathrm{nil}_t\}_{t\in\mathbb R}\). The main result of the paper states that the recurrent set \(\mathcal R(\varphi_t)\) is the intersection of the fixed point sets \(\mathrm{fix}(\varphi^\mathrm{hyp})\) and \(\mathrm{fix}(\varphi^\mathrm{nil})\) (see Theorems 1.1 and 4.2).