Essential hyperbolicity and homoclinic bifurcations: a dichotomy phenomenon/mechanism for diffeomorphisms (Q493107)

J. Palis conjectured in the 80's that every \(C^r\)-diffeomorphism on a compact manifold could be \(C^r\)-approximated by another diffeomorphism which is either hyperbolic or possesses a heterodimensional cycle or a homoclinic tangency. In this paper, the authors prove the above conjecture in the \(C^1\)-topology if the diffeomorphism is essentially hyperbolic. By essential hyperbolicity one means that the diffeomorphism has a finite number of transitive hyperbolic attractors and the union of their basins of attraction is open and dense. Several new techniques are developed in the proof of the main theorem such as chain-hyperbolicity and the hyperbolicity of extreme subbundles. The proof consists of three steps which focus on diffeomorphisms far from homoclinic bifurcations and on their quasi-attractors. They first show that the quasi-attractors are topologically hyperbolic. Then, they apply a series of perturbation techniques to ensure that the topologically hyperbolic quasi-attractors are uniformly hyperbolic attractors. Finally, they prove that the set of quasi-attractors is finite.