Computing domains of attraction for planar dynamics

Abstract

In this note we investigate the problem of computing the domain of attraction of a flow on ℝ2 for a given attractor. We consider an operator that takes two inputs, the description of the flow and a cover of the attractors, and outputs the domain of attraction for the given attractor. We show that: (i) if we consider only (structurally) stable systems, the operator is (strictly semi-)computable; (ii) if we allow all systems defined by C 1-functions, the operator is not (semi-)computable. We also address the problem of computing limit cycles on these systems. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.