Conley barriers and their applications: Chain-recurrence and Lyapunov functions (Q842969)

Conley [\textit{C. Conley}, Isolated invariant sets and the Morse index. Regional Conference Series in Mathematics. No.~38. (Providence), R.I.: American Mathematical Society (AMS). (1978; Zbl 0397.34056)] studied the structure of the set of chain-recurrent points for a continuous map \(f:X\to X\) of a compact metric space in terms of attractors of \(f\) and their basins of attraction. \textit{M. Hurley} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 126, No.~1, 245--256 (1998; Zbl 0891.58025)] extended the work to the setting of separable metric spaces, constructing a Lyapunov function for \(f\). In this paper a cost is associated to chains, and this is used to construct a barrier function which is then used to describe chain-recurrence in terms of continuous functions. It is also used to construct a non-trivial ultrametric metric on the space of chain-transitive components. These constructions are generalized to the setting of a continuous compactum-valued map.