The Marotto Theorem on planar monotone or competitive maps

Abstract

In 1978, Marotto generalized Li–Yorke’s results on the criterion for chaos from one-dimensional discrete dynamical systems to n-dimensional discrete dynamical systems, showing that the existence of a non-degenerate snap-back repeller implies chaos in the sense of Li–Yorke. This theorem is very useful in predicting and analyzing discrete chaos in multi-dimensional dynamical systems. Yet, besides it is well known that there exists an error in the conditions of the original Marotto Theorem, and several authors had tried to correct it in different way, Chen, Hsu and Zhou pointed out that the verification of “non-degeneracy” of a snap-back repeller is the most difficult in general and expected, “almost beyond reasonable doubt,” that the existence of only degenerate snap-back repeller still implies chaotic, which was posed as a conjecture by them. In this paper, we shall give necessary and sufficient conditions of chaos in the sense of Li–Yorke for planar monotone or competitive discrete dynamical systems and solve Chen–Hsu–Zhou Conjecture for such kinds of systems.