Homotopy Index and Partial Differential Equations

The homotopy index theory was developed by Charles Conley for two­ sided flows on compact spaces. The homotopy or Conley index, which provides an algebraic-topologi­ cal measure of an isolated invariant set, is defined to be the ho­ motopy type of the quotient space N /N , where is a certain 1 2 1 2 compact pair, called an index pair. Roughly speaking, N1 isolates the invariant set and N2 is the ...