Nonexistence of codimension one Anosov flows on compact manifolds with boundary

Abstract

A flow is Anosov if it exhibits contracting and expanding directions forming with the flow a continuous tangent bundle decomposition. An Anosov flow is codimension one if its contracting or expanding direction is one-dimensional. Examples of codimension one Anosov flows on compact boundaryless manifolds can be exhibited in any dimension ⩾ 3 . In this paper, we prove that there are no codimension one Anosov flows on compact manifolds with boundary. The proof uses an extension to flows of some results in Hirsch [On Invariant Subsets of Hyperbolic Sets, Essays on Topology and Related Topics, Memoires dédiés à Georges de Rham, 1970, pp. 126–135] related to Question 10(b) in Palis and Pugh [Fifty problems in dynamical systems, in: J. Palis, C.C. Pugh (Eds.), Dynamical Systems-Warwick 1974 (Proc. Sympos. Appl. Topology and Dynamical Systems, Univ. Warwick, Coventry, 1973/1974; presented to E.C. Zeeman on his fiftieth birthday), Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol. 468, Springer, Berlin, 1975, pp. 345–353].