Topological horseshoes and delay differential equations (Q556489)

The property that a Poincaré map for an ODE \(\dot x(t) = f(x(t))\) contains topological horseshoes is shown also to hold for the delay equation \(\dot x(t) = f(x(t-h))\), if the delay \(h\) is sufficiently small. The topological methods of the proof are complementary to the more analytical methods in the work of C. Chicone, which give a justification of expansion with respect to the small delay \(h\). The precise notion of `topological horseshoe' is based on so-called covering relations, which are a topological abstraction of the classical contraction/expansion/intersection properties of the Smale horseshoe. The robustness of these properties is their great advantage and is crucial for the perturbation argument, which further uses the comparison of solutions of the ODE to solutions of the delay equation with constant initial function. Symbolic dynamics is obtained from the covering relations using the fixed-point index. Estimates on the admissible size of the delay can be proved using the framework of differential inclusions. The paper gains particular educational value from the part on covering relations, and from the appendix on the topological tools.