Conley-Morse Chain Maps

Abstract

We introduce a new class of Conley-Morse chain maps for the purpose of comparing the qualitative structure of flows across multiple scales. Conley index theory generalizes classical Morse theory as a tool for studying the dynamics of flows. The qualitative structure of a flow, given a Morse decomposition, can be stored algebraically as a set of homology groups (Conley indices) and a boundary map between the indices (a connection matrix). We show that as long as the qualitative structures of two flows agree on some, perhaps coarse, level we can construct a chain map between the corresponding chain complexes that preserves the relations between the (coarsened) Morse sets. We present elementary examples to motivate applications to data analysis.