Embedding in a flow of Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms on manifolds of dimension higher than two (Q2435829)

The authors define a subset \(G_k(M^n)\) of the space of Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms on a smooth manifold \(M^n\) diffeomorphic to the \(n\)-sphere \(S^n\), and they give necessary and sufficient conditions for an element of \(G_k(M^n)\) to embed in a topological flow. Let \(M^n\) be a smooth connected closed manifold of dimension \(n\). Define \(G_k(M^n)\) to be the set of orientation-preserving Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms \(f:M^n\rightarrow M^n\) satisfying: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize} \item[1)] the nonwandering set \(\Omega(f)\) coincides with the set of fixed points of \(f\). \item [2)] the set of saddle points consists of precisely \(k > 0\) saddle points, and the stable manifold \(W^s(\sigma)\) of any saddle fixed point \(\sigma \in \Omega(f)\) has dimension \(n-1\). \item [3)] for any two different saddle points \(p,q\in \Omega(f)\), the intersection \(W^u(p) \cap W^s(p)\) is empty. \end{itemize}} The authors note that the preceding conditions imply that \(M^n\) is diffeomorphic to the \(n\)-sphere, and by previous results they obtain {Theorem 1.} If \(n \geq 4\), then any diffeomorphism \(f \in G_k(M^n)\) embeds in a topological flow. Moreover, in [Topology 8, 385--405 (1969; Zbl 0189.23902)] \textit{J. Palis} gave necessary and sufficient conditions for any Morse-Smale diffeomorphism on a \(2\)-manifold to embed in a topological flow. So, the focus of this paper is on the case \(n=3\). For the case \(n=3\) the authors define a two-dimensional separatrix frame \(F_\alpha\), and they state their main theorem as Theorem 2. A diffeomorphism \(f \in G_k(M^3)\) embeds in a topological flow if and only if the frame \(F_\alpha\) is trivially embedded.