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The theory of bounded, distributive lattices provides the appropriate language for describing directionality and asymptotics in dynamical systems. For bounded, distributive lattices the general notion of `set-difference' taking values in a semilattice is introduced, and is called the Conley form. The Conley form is used to build concrete, set-theoretical models of spectral, or Priestley spaces, of bounded, distributive lattices and their finite coarsenings. Such representations build order-theoretic models of dynamical systems, which are used to develop tools for computing global characteristics of a dynamical system.

Living systems exhibit complex yet organized behavior on multiple spatiotemporal scales. To investigate the nature of multiscale coordination in living systems, one needs a meaningful and systematic way to quantify the complex dynamics, a challenge in both theoretical and empirical realms. The present work shows how integrating approaches from computational algebraic topology and dynamical systems may help us meet this challenge. In particular, we focus on the application of multiscale topological analysis to coordinated rhythmic processes. First, theoretical arguments are introduced as to why certain topological features and their scale-dependency are highly relevant to understanding complex collective dynamics. Second, we propose a method to capture such dynamically relevant topological information using persistent homology, which allows us to effectively construct a multiscale topological portrait of rhythmic coordination. Finally, the method is put to test in detecting transitions in real data from an experiment of rhythmic coordination in ensembles of interacting humans. The recurrence plots of topological portraits highlight collective transitions in coordination patterns that were elusive to more traditional methods. This sensitivity to collective transitions would be lost if the behavioral dynamics of individuals were treated as separate degrees of freedom instead of constituents of the topology that they collectively forge. Such multiscale topological portraits highlight collective aspects of coordination patterns that are irreducible to properties of individual parts. The present work demonstrates how the analysis of multiscale coordination dynamics can benefit from topological methods, thereby paving the way for further systematic quantification of complex, high-dimensional dynamics in living systems., Comment: 28 pages

We develop a validated numerical procedure for continuation of local stable/unstable manifold patches attached to equilibrium solutions of ordinary differential equations. The procedure has two steps. First we compute an accurate high order Taylor expansion of the local invariant manifold. This expansion is valid in some neighborhood of the equilibrium. An important component of our method is that we obtain mathematically rigorous lower bounds on the size of this neighborhood, as well as validated a-posteriori error bounds for the polynomial approximation. In the second step we use a rigorous numerical integrating scheme to propagate the boundary of the local stable/unstable manifold as long as possible, i.e.\ as long as the integrator yields validated error bounds below some desired tolerance. The procedure exploits adaptive remeshing strategies which track the growth/decay of the Taylor coefficients of the advected curve. In order to highlight the utility of the procedure we study the embedding of some two dimensional manifolds in the Lorenz system.

The algebraic structure of the attractors in a dynamical system determine much of its global dynamics. The collection of all attractors has a natural lattice structure, and this structure can be detected through attracting neighborhoods, which can in principle be computed. Indeed, there has been much recent work on developing and implementing general computational algorithms for global dynamics, which are capable of computing attracting neighborhoods efficiently. Here we address the question of whether all of the algebraic structure of attractors can be captured by these methods.

We describe the basic lattice structures of attractors and repellers in dynamical systems. The structure of distributive lattices allows for an algebraic treatment of gradient-like dynamics in general dynamical systems, both invertible and noninvertible. We separate those properties which rely solely on algebraic structures from those that require some topological arguments, in order to lay a foundation for the development of algorithms to manipulate these structures computationally.