Hausdorff dimension of Cantor intersections and robust heterodimensional cycles for heterochaos horseshoe maps

Abstract

As a model to provide a hands-on, elementary understanding of chaotic dynamics in dimension three, we introduce a $C^2$-open set of diffeomorphisms of $\mathbb R^3$ having two horseshoes with different dimensions of instability. We prove that: the unstable set of one horseshoe and the stable set of the other are of Hausdorff dimension nearly $2$ whose cross sections are Cantor sets; the intersection of the unstable and stable sets contains a fractal set of Hausdorff dimension nearly $1$. As a corollary we detect $C^2$-robust heterodimensional cycles. Our proof employs the theory of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds and the thicknesses of Cantor sets.