Critical homoclinic orbits lead to snap-back repellers

Abstract When nondegenerate homoclinic orbits to an expanding fixed point of a map f : X → X , X ⊆ R n , exist, the point is called a snap-back repeller. It is known that the relevance of a snap-back repeller (in its original definition) is due to the fact that it implies the existence of an invariant set on which the map is chaotic. However, when does the first homoclinic orbit appear? When can other homoclinic explosions, i.e., appearance of infinitely many new homoclinic orbits, occur? As noticed by many authors, these problems are still open. In this work we characterize these bifurcations, for any kind of map, smooth or piecewise smooth, continuous or discontinuous, defined in a bounded or unbounded closed set. We define a noncritical homoclinic orbit and a homoclinic orbit of an expanding fixed point is structurally stable iff it is noncritical. That is, only critical homoclinic orbits are responsible for the homoclinic explosions. The possible kinds of critical homoclinic orbits will be also investigated, as well as their dynamic role.