Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2009
In this paper we study closed sets having a neighbourhood with compact closure which are positively asymptotically stable under a flow on a metric space X. For an understanding of this and the rest of the introduction it is sufficient for the reader to have in mind as an example of a flow a system of first order, autonomous ordinary differential equations describing mathematically a time-independent physical system; in short a dynamical system. In a flow a set M is positively stable if the trajectories through all points sufficiently close to M remain in the future in a given neighbourhood of M. The set M is positively asymptotically stable if it is positively stable and, in addition, trajectories through all points of some neighbourhood of M approach M in the future.