Pitchfork bifurcations of invariant manifolds

A pitchfork bifurcation of an (m−1)-dimensional invariant submanifold of a dynamical system in Rm is defined analogous to that in R. Sufficient conditions for such a bifurcation to occur are stated and existence of the bifurcated manifolds is proved under the stated hypotheses. For discrete dynamical systems, the existence of locally attracting manifolds M₊ and M₋, after the bifurcation has taken place is proved by constructing a diffeomorphism of the unstable manifold M. Techniques used for proving the theorem involve differential topology and analysis. The theorem is illustrated by means of a canonical example.