For a nonsingular smooth flow generated by on a closed manifold, the Anosov flow condition is a continuous -invariant splitting
and constants such that, for all ,
The norm can come from any auxiliary Riemannian metric; compactness makes the resulting definitions equivalent. The centre direction is the flow direction, with nowhere zero.
One construction is a suspension flow. The hyperbolic toral automorphism of defined by
has eigenvalues , with . Form the closed three-dimensional mapping torus and move in the second coordinate at unit speed. Each crossing of the section applies . The two one-dimensional eigenspaces give invariant transverse bundles, and after crossings their derivatives multiply by and . The difference between and elapsed time is bounded, so any smooth Riemannian metric gives the required uniform exponential estimates. The vertical direction supplies the centre line.
A different construction is the geodesic flow on the unit tangent bundle of a closed oriented hyperbolic surface. This bundle is a closed three-manifold. In curvature , a normal Jacobi field along a unit-speed geodesic satisfies . The initial data give , while give . The linearized geodesic flow transports these initial data as , so they give one stable and one unstable direction with precisely those exponential rates. The remaining tangent direction is the geodesic vector field. Thus this also constructs an Anosov flow, using geometric rather than return-map hyperbolicity.