An introduction to the analysis of gradients systems

The present notes provide an extended version of a small lecture course given at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in the Winter Term 2022/23 (of 36 hours). The material starting in Section 5.4 was added afterwards. The aim of these notes to give an introductory overview on the analytical approaches for gradient-flow equations in Hilbert spaces, Banach spaces, and metric spaces and to show that on the first entry level these theories have a lot in common. The theories and their specific setups are illustrated by suitable examples and counterexamples.