A Poincar\'e-Bendixson theorem for Bebutov shifts and applications to switched systems

We prove a version of the Poincar\'e-Bendixson theorem for certain classes of curves on the 2-sphere which are not required to be the trajectories of an underlying flow or semiflow on the sphere itself. Using this result we extend the Poincar\'e-Bendixson theorem to the context of continuous semiflows on compact subsets of the 2-sphere and the projective plane, give new sufficient conditions for the existence of periodic trajectories of certain low-dimensional affine control systems, and give a new criterion for the global uniform exponential stability of switched systems of homogeneous ODEs in dimension three. We prove in particular that periodic asymptotic stability implies global uniform exponential stability for real linear switched systems of dimension three and complex linear switched systems of dimension two. In combination with a recent result of the second author, this resolves a question of R. Shorten, F. Wirth, O. Mason, K. Wulff and C. King and resolves a natural analogue of the Lagarias-Wang finiteness conjecture in continuous time.