Homoclinic shadowing (Q2570847)

The famous Smale-Birkhoff theorem provides a criterion for chaotic behavior of dynamical systems. More precisely, the existence of transversal homoclinic orbits leads to hyperbolic sets containing the shift, a horseshoe and thus chaotic dynamics. In this interesting and well-written paper, the authors present a new and rigorous method to establish the existence of such a transversal homoclinic orbit associated to a periodic orbit of a \(C^2\)-diffeomorphism on \({\mathbb R}^n\). Thereto, they deduce a Homoclinic Orbit Shadowing Theorem, claiming that for sufficiently small \(\delta>0\), a \(\delta\)-pseudo \(N\)-periodic orbit \(\{y_n\}_{n\in{\mathbb Z}}\) is shadowed by a unique true hyperbolic \(N\)-periodic orbit, provided \(\{y_n\}_{n\in{\mathbb Z}}\) and \(\{y_{n+\tau}\}_{n\in{\mathbb Z}}\), with \(0\leq\tau<N\), can be connected by a \(\delta\)-pseudo homoclinic orbit. Here, it is worth to point out that the smallness condition on \(\delta\) contains only quantities which are computable (see the paper for details). Consequently, the computer-assisted approach in this paper consists of two main steps: (1) Using a global Newton method, one computes a suitable approximate homoclinic orbit to a pseudo-periodic orbit. (2) Then, the Homoclinic Shadowing Theorem establishes the existence of a true transversal homoclinic orbit to a true periodic orbit near these pseudo-orbits. This technique is illustrated using several examples, namely the Hénon map, its area-preserving variant and the Cremona map. Two sections are devoted to the question how to fulfill the assumptions of the Homoclinic Shadowing Theorem, and the article closes with implementation details for the Hénon map. Related is the work of \textit{W.-J. Beyn} and \textit{J.-M. Kleinkauf} [Numer. Algorithms 14, 25--53 (1997; Zbl 0898.65041), SIAM J. Numer. Anal. 34, 1207--1236 (1997; Zbl 0876.58020)], however, with a focus on effective computation of homoclinic orbits, and not their existence.