Partial symmetry breaking and heteroclinic tangencies

Abstract

We study some global aspects of the bifurcation of an equivariant family of volume-contracting vector fields on the three-dimensional sphere. When part of the symmetry is broken, the vector fields exhibit Bykov cycles. Close to the symmetry, we investigate the mechanism of the emergence of heteroclinic tangencies coexisting with transverse connections. We find persistent suspended horseshoes accompanied by attracting periodic trajectories with long periods.