Asymptotic Poincaré maps along the edges of polytopes

Abstract

For a class of flows on polytopes, including many examples from Evolutionary Game Theory, we describe a piecewise linear model which encapsulates the asymptotic dynamics along the heteroclinic network formed out of the polytope’s vertexes and edges. This piecewise linear flow is easy to compute even in higher dimensions, which allows the usage of numeric algorithms to find invariant dynamical structures such as periodic, homoclinic or heteroclinic orbits, which if robust persist as invariant dynamical structures of the original flow. We apply this method to prove the existence of chaotic behavior in some Hamiltonian replicator systems on the five dimensional simplex.