Complete Topological Invariant and Coding of Homoclinic Flows on the Two-Dimensional Sphere

Abstract

We study codimension one homoclinic flows on closed surfaces and introduce a complete topological invariant based on the structural graph of the flow and the distinguishing graphs of its atoms. This invariant completely determines the topological equivalence class of a homoclinic flow. For flows on the two-dimensional sphere, we construct a canonical coding algorithm that avoids the global renumbering required in the classical coding of Morse flows and substantially reduces the computational complexity. As an application, we derive recursive formulas for the number of topologically distinct homoclinic flows on the two-dimensional sphere and compute these numbers for flows with a small number of saddle singularities and closed orbits.