Simplified Morse-Bott-Smale chain complex

Abstract: Banyaga and Hurtubise defined the Morse-Bott-Smale chain complex as a quotient of a large chain complex by introducing five degeneracy relations. In this paper, we unify the five conditions into only one degeneracy condition. This allows for a simpler definition of Morse-Bott homology and more computable examples. Moreover, we show that our chain complex for a Morse-Smale function is quasi-isomorphic to the Morse-Smale-Witten chain complex. As a result, we obtain another proof of the Morse Homology Theorem.