On the existence of attractors

Abstract

On every compact 3-manifold, we build a non-empty open set $\cU$ of $\Diff^1(M)$ such that, for every $r\geq 1$, every $C^r$-generic diffeomorphism $f\in\cU\cap \Diff^r(M)$ has no topological attractors. On higher dimensional manifolds, one may require that $f$ has neither topological attractors nor topological repellers. Our examples have finitely many quasi attractors. For flows, we may require that these quasi attractors contain singular points. Finally we discuss alternative definitions of attractors which may be better adapted to generic dynamics.