Poincaré-Hopf inequalities for periodic orbits

Abstract

The interplay between the dynamics of a nonsingular Morse-Smale flow on a smooth, closed, n-dimensional manifold, M, and the topology of M, was exhibited in Franks (Comment Math Helv 53(2):279–294, 1978), Smale (Bull Am Math Soc 66:43–49, 1960), by means of a collection of inequalities, which we refer to as Morse-Smale inequalities. These inequalities relate the number of closed orbits of each index to the Betti numbers of M. These well-known inequalities provide the necessary conditions for a given dynamical data in the form of a specified number of closed orbits of a given index to be realized as a nonsingular Morse-Smale flow on M. In this article we provide two inequalities, hereby referred to as Poincare-Hopf inequalities for periodic orbits, which imposes constraints on the dynamics of periodic orbits without reference to the Betti numbers of the manifold M. The main theorem establishes the necessity and sufficiency of the Poincare-Hopf inequalities in order for the Morse-Smale inequalities to hold.