Abstract : It is by now well known that collections of compact (real-)analytic vector fields and locally connected trajectories thereof are mutually well behaved in a way that can be made precise via notions from mathematical logic, namely, by saying that the structure on the real field generated by the collection is o-minimal (that is, every subset of the real numbers definable in the structure is a finite union of points and open intervals). There are also many examples known where the assumption of analyticity or compactness can be removed, yet o-minimality still holds. Less well known is that there are examples where o-minimality visibly fails, but there is nevertheless a well-defined notion of tameness in place. In this talk, I will: (a) make this weaker notion of tameness precise; (b) describe a class of examples where the weaker notion holds; and (c) present evidence for conjecturing that there might be no other classes of examples of “non-o-minimal tameness”. (Joint work with Patrick Speissegger.)
A few corrections and comments about this talk are available in the PDF file at the bottom of the page.