Topological Invariants for Equivariant Flows: Conley Index and Degree

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Topological Invariants for Equivariant Flows: Conley Index and Degree Institute of Mathematics Polish Academy of Sciences Marcin Styborski Topological invariants for equivariant flows: Conley index and degree PhD Thesis Supervisor: Dr hab. Marek Izydorek Gdańsk University of Technology Gdańsk 2009 Contents Contentsi 0 Introduction1 0.1 Overview of the results.....................2 1 Classical Conley’s theory5 1.1 Morse–Conley–Zehnder equation................5 1.2 Continuation to a gradient...................9 1.3 Euler characteristic of the index................ 10 1.4 Conley index and the Brouwer degree............. 10 2 LS -index 13 2.1 LS -flows and the index.................... 13 2.1.1 Cohomological LS -Conley index........... 16 2.2 LS -index and the Leray–Schauder degree.......... 18 2.2.1 Alternative approach in the particular case...... 21 3 Equivariant theory 25 3.1 Basic equivariant topology................... 26 3.1.1 Orbit types....................... 27 3.1.2 Slices........................... 28 3.1.3 G-complexes....................... 29 3.1.4 Euler ring U(G) ..................... 30 3.2 Degree for G-equivariant gradient maps............ 32 3.3 Equivariant Conley index.................... 34 3.4 Equivariant Morse–Conley–Zehnder equation......... 37 3.4.1 Poincaré polynomial for an isolated orbit....... 41 3.4.2 Some multiplicity results................ 45 3.5 Continuation of equivariant maps to a gradient........ 51 4 On the invertibility in U(G) 54 4.1 Technicalities.......................... 54 4.2 Self-invertibility of SV ..................... 55 5 Appendix 58 Bibliografy 62 Chapter 0 Introduction About forty years have passed since Charles Conley defined the homo- topy index. Thereby, he generalized the ideas that go back to the calculus of variations work of Marston Morse. Within this long time the Conley index has proved to be a valuable tool in nonlinear analysis and dynamical systems. A significant development of applied methods has been observed. Later, the index theory has evolved to cover such areas as discrete dynam- ical systems, or analysis of flows defined on locally noncompact spaces cf. LS -index. Using the Conley theory, one is interested in the behavior of the particular sets of solutions, called isolated invariant sets, of differential equations. The index of an isolated invariant set S is a homotopy type (or, in case of an LS -index, a stable homotopy type) of the quotient X=A of a certain pair, called the index pair. It will be denoted by h(S). Since the homotopy types cannot be lined up (like, for instance, the real numbers) and they are often very difficult to distinguish, they are fairly hard to work with. Thus, the cohomological index H∗(X=A) has been found to be more accessible to the applications. It it easier to compare this index with other algebraic topological characteristics of the dynamical systems. Probably the most important feature, among others, of the Conley index is the invariance with respect to small perturbations of the initial differen- tial equation. A large collection of tools, called the homotopy invariants, has this special property. They include: the index of a zero of a vector field, topological degree, intersection number, Lefschetz number etc. Herein, we are focused on the topological degree and some of its extensions. The over- all aim of this thesis is to study the relationship between the degree of a vector field and the Conley index of the induced flow. A large part of the thesis is devoted to the equivariant version of the Morse type inequali- ties (called equivariant Morse–Conley–Zehnder equation). The equivariant Morse inequalities have been used to compare the G-Conley index with the gradient equivariant degree. It was actually my primary intention. How- ever, this Morse–Conley–Zehnder equation seems to be very useful in the critical point theory. Therefore, I decided to place some simple multiplicity results for critical orbits of invariant (with respect to the Lie group action) functions. They are rather well known to many mathematicians. My in- tention was only to indicate possible directions in which one can go using these methods. Still, it would be interesting to extend these methods to infinite-dimensional domains, i.e., to apply the G-equivariant MCZ equa- tion to critical point theory of strongly indefinite functionals on Hilbert 0.1 Overview of the results 2 spaces. From this point of view, it would allow us to investigate the Hamil- tonian systems using the variational treatment. As it is shown in [24], this problem is naturally equipped with symmetries of a group SO(2) (and its subgroups). 0.1 Overview of the results. The celebrated Poincaré-Hopf Theorem establishes a relationship be- tween the local invariants of a vector field at its zeroes and the global in- variants of the compact manifold where it is defined. The theses contained in this dissertation are another results of this kind. Here the compact mani- fold is replaced by a so-called index pair, and the topological degree plays a role of the local invariant of a vector field. We treat separately three cases. 1. Firstly, we provide a known comparison of the classical Conley index and the Brouwer degree (Theorem (1.17)). Namely, if φv is a (local) flow of the differential equation x_ = −v(x), and S is an isolated φv-invariant set with an isolateing neighborhood N (cf. Section 1.1), then χ(h(S)) = deg(v; N): The above formula has been first proved by McCord in [33]. Earlier Dancer in [9] proved this kind of relation for considerably smaller class of isolated invariant sets, precisely for degenerate critical points. A simple proof can be found in the book by Rybakowski [41] (See Chapter 3, Theorem 3.8). We present an elegant proof of this fact given by Razvan and Fotouhi in [37], based on Morse inequalities and Reineck continuation theorem [38]. 2. The LS -Conley index, the extension of the Conley’s invariant, is pre- sented, and the relations to the Leray–Schauder degree are studied. The extension of the classical Conley’s theory was introduced by Gęba, Izydorek and Pruszko in [16]. They considered so-called LS -vector fields in a Hilbert space, i.e., completely continuous perturbations of a bounded linear opera- tor L: H ! H, and defined the index for flows induced by such maps. There is a particular property that makes the LS -index applicable to many varia- tional problems. Namely, an operator L can be strongly indefinite, i.e., both positive and negative eigenspaces of L can be infinite-dimensional. Further development of this homotopy invariant was presented by Izydorek in [23]. He defined a cohomological LS -index and using this index gave existence results for various strongly indefinite problems. We briefly sketch out this definition. A cohomological version of the LS -index allows us to define the Betti numbers and the Euler characteristic of the LS -index in the most natural way. Let H be a real, infinite-dimensional Hilbert space. With a locally Lips- chitz vector field f : H ! H, which is a completely continuous perturbation, say K, of the bounded (invertible) linear operator L, one can associate a 0.1 Overview of the results 3 t local flow φf satisfying d φt = −f ◦ φt ; φ0 = id: dt f f f Under certain assumptions we prove the formula (cf. Theorem (2.13)) ^ χ(hLS (S)) = degLS (f; N): The right-hand side of the above equality stands for the standard Leray– Schauder degree with respect to a bounded set N. The map f^ is defined by f^(x) = x+L−1K(x). On the other hand we have the Euler characteristic (cf. Definition (2.11)); hLS (S) stands for the LS -index of an isolated invariant t set S = inv(N) of the flow φf . The proof is based on finite-dimensional formula mentioned above. Similar result was obtained by Kryszewski and Szulkin in [31] for S being a critical point of a smooth strongly indefinite functional. We also give an alternative method of proving Theorem (2.13), at least in a particular case, see Theorem (2.22). The isolated invariant set is the origin of a Hilbert space, and a map L is of the form Lx := x+ − x−, where x = x+ + x− 2 H = H+ ⊕ H−. 3. At last, the G-equivariant Conley index and the G-equivariant gradient degree is studied. We placed the most emphasis on this case. With this end in view we proved an equivariant version of Morse–Conley–Zehnder equation, see Theorem (3.47). The key point to obtain this result was to accurately define the Poincaré polynomial of the G-index hG(S) of an isolated invariant G-set. Having in mind the form of the elements of the Euler ring (cf. Proposition (3.16)), we define 1 X X q (H) >(H) (H) q G PG(t; hG(S)) := rank H (X =G; (X [ A )=G) t u(H); (H)2Φ(G) q=0 where (X; A) is an arbitrary G-index pair for S. Beside the fact that this polynomial has an unfriendly form, and causes some technical difficulties, the proof of the Morse–Conley–Zehnder equation is a consequence of stan- dard cohomological arguments. With the help of the prepared tools, and using approximation techniques for gradient G-equivariant mappings pro- vided by Gęba (see Theorem (3.24)), we prove that (vide Theorem (3.61)) r u(hG(S)) = degG(f; Ω); where u stands for, roughly speaking, an equivariant Euler characteristic (taking values in the Euler ring U(G)). In addition to the comparison of the Conley index and the degree, one can also find two, unconnected at the first sight, results. The first one is concerned with the G-flows and asserts that an isolated invariant set of a 0.1 Overview of the results 4 G-flow can be linked by a special kind of homotopy to the isolated invariant set of a gradient G-flow (cf.
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