Validated Computation of Heteroclinic Sets

Abstract: In this work we develop a method for computing mathematically rigorous enclosures of some one dimensional manifolds of heteroclinic orbits for nonlinear maps. Our method exploits a rigorous curve following argument build on high order Taylor approximation of the local stable/unstable manifolds. The curve following argument is a uniform interval Newton method applied on short line segments. The definition of the heteroclinic sets involve compositions of the map and we use a Lohner-type representation to overcome the accumulation of roundoff errors. Our argument requires precise control over the local unstable and stable manifolds so that we must first obtain validated a-posteriori error bounds on the truncation errors associated with the manifold approximations. We illustrate the utility of our method by proving some computer assisted theorems about heteroclinic invariant sets for a volume preserving map of $\mathbb{R}^3$.