Symmetric homoclinic tangles in reversible systems

Abstract

We study the dynamics near transverse intersections of stable and unstable manifolds of sheets of symmetric periodic orbits in reversible systems. We prove that the dynamics near such homoclinic and heteroclinic intersections is not $C^1$ structurally stable. This is in marked contrast to the dynamics near transverse intersections in both general and conservative systems, which can be $C^1$ structurally stable. We further show that there are infinitely many sheets of symmetric periodic orbits near the homoclinic or heteroclinic orbits. We establish the robust occurrence of heterodimensional cycles, that is, heteroclinic cycles between hyperbolic periodic orbits of different index, near the transverse intersections. This is shown to imply the existence of hyperbolic horseshoes and infinitely many periodic orbits of different index, all near the transverse intersections.