Shape and stability of rotation sets for incompressible flows on the torus

Abstract In this paper we introduce the concept of rotation cones, determined by rotation sets, and use these to describe the stability of rotation sets of incompressible and fixed-point free continuous flows on the torus $$\mathbb{T}^{d}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>d</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> , d ⩾ 2. The previous concept is equivalent and extends the stability of rotation numbers (and rotation vectors) in the special case of fixed-point free continuous flows on $$\mathbb{T}^{2}$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>T</mml:mi> </mml:mrow> <mml:mrow> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:msup> </mml:math> . We prove that incompressible Lipschitz vector fields with stable rotation sets have convex rotation cones with non-empty interior, and that all extremal edges are collinear with vectors in ℤ d . If, in addition, the rotation cones are proper, then these are polyhedral with finitely many edges. Finally we prove that the set of vector fields with stable rotation sets is C 0 -open and dense among those having proper rotation cones.