Shooting methods and topological transversality (Q4935376)

The well-known Birkhoff-Smale theorem states that a transversal homoclinic point is accompanied by complicated dynamics involving periodic orbits, multi-pulse homoclinic orbits and Smale horseshoes. In the present paper it is proved how one can get a similar complicated structure when some weaker notion of transversality is satisfied by the stable and unstable manifolds. This topological transversality may still hold even when the usual transversality is not satisfied and allows the use of the lambda lemma. In a similar fashion Devaney's theorem on the existence of Smale horseshoes near a homoclinic orbit to a saddle-focus equilibrium in Hamiltonian systems is proved under weaker transversality assumptions. The importance of these results lies in the fact that topological transversality can be used to prove the existence of complicated dynamics when the primary homoclinic or heteroclinic orbit is found by some shooting method. Using the extended Fisher-Kolmogorov equation as an illustrative example the author shows in detail how topological transversality can be deduced from the shooting method.