Global Attractors: Topology and Finite-Dimensional Dynamics

Many dissipative evolution equations possess a global attractor with finite Hausdorff dimension d. In this paper it is shown that there is an embedding X of into , with N=[2d+2], such that X is the global attractor of some finite-dimensional system on with trivial dynamics on X. This allows the construction of a discrete dynamical system on which reproduces the dynamics of the time T map on and has an attractor within an arbitrarily small neighborhood of X. If the Hausdorff dimension is replaced by the fractal dimension, a similar construction can be shown to hold good even if one restricts to orthogonal projections rather than arbitrary embeddings.