The generalized recurrent set, explosions and Lyapunov functions (Q2211288)

The authors study the behaviour of the so-called \textit{generalized recurrent set} of a homeomorphism of a compact metric space under continuous perturbations of the map. In particular, they are concerned with explosions of the generalized recurrent set, that is, discontinuous changes on the size of the generalized recurrent set. In Section 2 sufficient conditions to avoid explosions of this kind are given (Corollary 3.1 and Proposition 3.2). In particular, they see that if the generalized recurrent set is not the total space and either the generalized recurrent set coincides with the chain recurrent set, or the homeomorphism is topologically stable, then the homeomorphism does not permit explosions. In addition, the authors introduce the concept of full explosion of the generalized chain recurrent set and show that if the chain recurrent set of a homeomorphism is not the total space, then it does not admit full explosions (Proposition 3.3). In Section 3 the authors show with examples that the previous conditions are not necessary. Section 4 is devoted to explain relations between explosions and cycles in the generalized recurrent set. The main result is Theorem 4.1, which establishes that for compact manifolds of dimension at least \(2\) a homeomorphism whose generalized recurrent set is not the total space does not permit explosions if and only if its generalized recurrent set admits a decomposition with no cycles. In Section 5 these results are applied in order to study whether the existence of strict Lyapunov functions is stable under continuous perturbations. The question is answered affirmatively whenever the space is a smooth compact manifold (Proposition 5.3).