English

Gradient Flow Line Near Birth-Death Critical Points

Differential Geometry 2018-05-04 v3 Dynamical Systems Symplectic Geometry

Abstract

Near a birth-death critical point in a one-parameter family of gradient flows, there are precisely two Morse critical points of index difference one on the birth side. This paper gives a self-contained proof of the folklore theorem that these two critical points are joined by a unique gradient trajectory up to time-shift. The proof is based on the Whitney normal form, a Conley index construction, and an adiabatic limit analysis for an associated fast-slow differential equation.

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.07746,
  title  = {Gradient Flow Line Near Birth-Death Critical Points},
  author = {Charel Antony},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.07746},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

39 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:27:51.996Z