Sets of periods of dynamical systems (Q981863)

From the Introduction: Dynamics is the study of eventual behaviour of orbits. The periodic orbits are the simplest kind of orbits. Therefore it is natural to investigate answers to the following general scheme of question: In a dynamical system \((X,f)\), what are all the lenths of the cycles there? In this article, we present a coherent, though not exhausitive, account of some well-known and some rexent results of many mathematicians (including our own) on the following question: Given a `nice' class of dynamical systems, which subsets of \(\mathbb{N}\) arise as the sets of periods of members of that class? While stating and explaining some elegant answers, proofs have been outlined or indicated occasionally.