The basic attractor and the remainder of homo- and heteroclinic orbits

In this paper, we discuss some issues in the dynamical systems theory of dissipative nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs), on a bounded domain. A decomposition theorem says that attractors of PDEs can be decomposed into a basic attractor (a core) that attracts sets of positive measure, it attracts a prevalent set in phase space, and a remainder whose basin, up to sets that are attracted to the basic attractor, is shy, or of zero (infinite-dimensional) measure. If the basic attractor is low-dimensional and the remainder high-dimensional, then the dynamics can still be analyzed up to transients that are exponentially decaying toward the attractor in time. We focus on (ODE) examples of homo- and heteroclinic connections and show that generically these connections lie in the remainder but there exist exceptional cases where they lie in the basic attractor.