Dynamical properties of spatial discretizations of a generic homeomorphism

TL;DR

This paper investigates how well the dynamical properties of generic homeomorphisms on compact manifolds can be inferred from their spatial discretizations, revealing differences between conservative and dissipative cases.

Contribution

It demonstrates that a single discretization cannot reveal the dynamics of a generic conservative homeomorphism, but sequences of finer discretizations can detect certain properties; for dissipative homeomorphisms, discretizations effectively approximate the true dynamics.

Findings

Single discretization dynamics depend on the grid, not the homeomorphism.

Sequences of finer discretizations can reveal some dynamical features.

Discretizations of dissipative homeomorphisms approximate true dynamics effectively.

Abstract

This paper concerns the link between the dynamical behaviour of a dynamical system and the dynamical behaviour of its numerical simulations. Here, we model numerical truncation as a spatial discretization of the system. Some previous works on well chosen examples show that the dynamical behaviours of dynamical systems and of their discretizations can be quite different. In this paper we are interested in generic homeomorphisms of compact manifolds. So our aim is to tackle the following question: can the dynamical properties of a generic homeomorphism be detected on the spatial discretizations of this homeomorphism? We study both conservative and dissipative homeomorphisms (i.e. with or without the assumption that the homeomorphism preserves a given measure). We will prove that the dynamics of a single discretization of a generic conservative homeomorphism does not depend on the homeomorphism itself, but rather on the grid used for the discretization. Therefore, dynamical properties of a given generic conservative homeomorphism cannot be detected using a single discretization. Nevertheless, we will also prove that some dynamical features of a generic conservative homeomorphism (such as the set of the periods of all periodic points) can be read on a sequence of finer and finer discretizations. The dissipative case is somehow opposite: we will see that the dynamics of a generic dissipative homeomorphism is well-approximated by the dynamics of any fine enough discretization of this homeomorphism.