Introduction to the application of the dynamical systems theory in the
  study of the dynamics of cosmological models of dark energy
  The theory of the dynamical systems is a very complex subject which has
brought several surprises in the recent past in connection with the theory of
chaos and fractals. The application of the tools of the dynamical systems in
cosmological settings is less known in spite of the amount of published
scientific papers on this subject. In this paper a -- mostly pedagogical --
introduction to the application in cosmology of the basic tools of the
dynamical systems theory is presented. It is shown that, in spite of their
amazing simplicity, these allow to extract essential information on the
asymptotic dynamics of a wide variety of cosmological models. The power of
these tools is illustrated within the context of the so called $\Lambda$CDM and
scalar field models of dark energy. This paper is suitable for teachers,
undergraduate and postgraduate students from physics and mathematics
disciplines.
