Abstract

We study the minimal sets of periods for Morse-Smale diffeo-morphisms on orientable compact surfaces; in fact our study extends to the C1 diffeomorphisms on these surfaces having all the periodic points hyper-bolic and the same action on the homology as the Morse-Smale diffeomor-phisms. We provide explicit information about these minimal sets of periods for the Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms on orientable compact surfaces of genus 0, 1, 2 and 3. Additionally we give an algorithm which allows the study of these minimal sets of periods for the Morse-Smale diffeomorphisms on orientable compact surfaces of arbitrary genus.