English

Refined methods in foliated Brouwer theory

Dynamical Systems 2025-10-21 v1

Abstract

A Brouwer homeomorphism is a fixed-point free, orientation-preserving homeomorphism of the plane. A foundational result of Le Calvez establishes that every such homeomorphism ff admits an oriented planar foliation F\mathcal{F} such that every point xR2x \in \mathbb{R}^2 can be connected to its image f(x)f(x) by a path positively transverse to F\mathcal{F}. This provides a powerful framework for analyzing the dynamics of ff by studying how its orbits cross the leaves of F\mathcal{F}. In this article, we refine this framework by identifying additional qualitative dynamical information about ff that is encoded in F\mathcal{F}, which can be systematically recovered through the concept of proper transverse trajectories. Later, we investigate the possible combinatorial configurations of these proper trajectories for finite collections of orbits and characterize their simplest forms. As a key application, this refined framework is used in a forthcoming work to offer a new perspective on Homotopy Brouwer Theory, originally introduced by Handel.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.17616,
  title  = {Refined methods in foliated Brouwer theory},
  author = {Nelson Schuback},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.17616},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

49 pages, 48 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T06:47:47.498Z