This work focuses on the preservation of attractors and saddle points of ordinary differential equations under discretisation. In the 1980s, key results for autonomous ordinary differential equations were obtained - by Beyn for saddle points and by Kloeden & Lorenz for attractors. One-step numerical schemes with a constant step size were considered, so the resulting discrete time dynamical system was also autonomous. One of the aims of this book is to present new findings on the discretisation of dissipative nonautonomous dynamical systems that have been obtained in recent years, and in particular to examine the properties of nonautonomous omega limit sets and their approximations by numerical schemes - results that are also of importance for autonomous systems approximated by a numerical scheme with variable time steps, thus by a discrete time nonautonomous dynamical system.

This authoritative treatment covers theory, optimal estimation and a range of practical applications. The first book on the subject, and written by leading researchers, this clear and rigorous work presents a comprehensive theory for both the stability boundary and the stability regions of a range of nonlinear dynamical systems including continuous, discrete, complex, two-time-scale and non-hyperbolic systems, illustrated with numerical examples. The authors also propose new concepts of quasi-stability region and of relevant stability regions and their complete characterisations. Optimal schemes for estimating stability regions of general nonlinear dynamical systems are also covered, and finally the authors describe and explain how the theory is applied in applications including direct methods for power system transient stability analysis, nonlinear optimisation for finding a set of high-quality optimal solutions, stabilisation of nonlinear systems, ecosystem dynamics, and immunisation problems.

Many of our daily-life problems can be written in the form of an optimization problem. Therefore, solution methods are needed to solve such problems. Due to the complexity of the problems, it is not always easy to find the exact solution. However, approximate solutions can be found. The theory of the best approximation is applicable in a variety of problems arising in nonlinear functional analysis and optimization. This book highlights interesting aspects of nonlinear analysis and optimization together with many applications in the areas of physical and social sciences including engineering. It is immensely helpful for young graduates and researchers who are pursuing research in this field, as it provides abundant research resources for researchers and post-doctoral fellows. This will be a valuable addition to the library of anyone who works in the field of applied mathematics, economics and engineering.

This volume collects thirteen expository or survey articles on topics including Fractal Geometry, Analysis of Fractals, Multifractal Analysis, Ergodic Theory and Dynamical Systems, Probability and Stochastic Analysis, written by the leading experts in their respective fields. The articles are based on papers presented at the International Conference on Advances on Fractals and Related Topics, held on December 10-14, 2012 at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The volume offers insights into a number of exciting, cutting-edge developments in the area of fractals, which has close ties to and applications in other areas such as analysis, geometry, number theory, probability and mathematical physics.

The Theory of Dynamical Systems was first introduced by the great mathematician Henri Poincaré as a qualitative study of differential equations. For more than forty years, Jacob Palis has made outstanding contributions to this area of mathematics. In the 1970s, following in the wake of Stephen Smale, he became one of the major figures in developing the Theory of Hyperbolic Dynamics and Structural Stability. This volume presents a selection of Jacob Palis’ mathematical contributions, starting with his PhD thesis and ending with papers on what is widely known as the Palis Conjecture. Most of the papers included in the present volume are inspired by the earlier work of Poincaré and, more recently, by Steve Smale among others. They aim at providing a description of the general structure of dynamical systems. Jacob Palis, whose work has been distinguished with numerous international prizes, is broadly recognized as the father of the Latin American School of Mathematics in Dynamical Systems and one of the most important scientific personalities on the continent. In 2010 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for his fundamental contributions in the Mathematical Theory of Dynamical Systems, which has been the basis for many applications in various scientific disciplines.

This monograph develops a generalised energy flow theory to investigate non-linear dynamical systems governed by ordinary differential equations in phase space and often met in various science and engineering fields. Important nonlinear phenomena such as, stabilities, periodical orbits, bifurcations and chaos are tack-led and the corresponding energy flow behaviors are revealed using the proposed energy flow approach. As examples, the common interested nonlinear dynamical systems, such as, Duffing’s oscillator, Van der Pol’s equation, Lorenz attractor, Rössler one and SD oscillator, etc, are discussed. This monograph lights a new energy flow research direction for nonlinear dynamics. A generalised Matlab code with User Manuel is provided for readers to conduct the energy flow analysis of their nonlinear dynamical systems. Throughout the monograph the author continuously returns to some examples in each chapter to illustrate the applications of the discussed theory and approaches. The book can be used as an undergraduate or graduate textbook or a comprehensive source for scientists, researchers and engineers, providing the statement of the art on energy flow or power flow theory and methods.

Mathematical analyses and computational predictions of the behavior of complex systems are needed to effectively deal with weather and climate predictions, for example, and the optimal design of technical processes. Given the random nature of such systems and the recognized relevance of randomness, the equations used to describe such systems usually need to involve stochastics. The basic goal of this book is to introduce the mathematics and application of stochastic equations used for the modeling of complex systems. A first focus is on the introduction to different topics in mathematical analysis. A second focus is on the application of mathematical tools to the analysis of stochastic equations. A third focus is on the development and application of stochastic methods to simulate turbulent flows as seen in reality. This book is primarily oriented towards mathematics and engineering PhD students, young and experienced researchers, and professionals working in the area of stochastic differential equations and their applications. It contributes to a growing understanding of concepts and terminology used by mathematicians, engineers, and physicists in this relatively young and quickly expanding field.

This book offers an in-depth study of two well-known models of “avalanche� dynamics, modified minimally by the inclusion of relaxation. Many complex systems respond to continuous inputs of energy by accumulation of stress over time, interrupted by sudden energy releases called avalanches. The first model studied is the viscoelastic interface driven over disorder, which is shown to display the fundamental features of friction. In the mean-field limit, the friction force derived semi-analytically is compatible with laboratory experiments (displaying both velocity weakening and contact aging). In two dimensions, large-scale numerical simulations are in good agreement with the basic features of real earthquakes (Gutenberg-Richter Law, aftershock migration). The second model is a non-Markovian variant of Directed Percolation, in which we observe that the universality class is only partly modified by relaxation, a promising finding with respect to our first model.

This book is on the iterative learning control (ILC) with focus on the design and implementation. We approach the ILC design based on the frequency domain analysis and address the ILC implementation based on the sampled data methods. This is the first book of ILC from frequency domain and sampled data methodologies. The frequency domain design methods offer ILC users insights to the convergence performance which is of practical benefits. This book presents a comprehensive framework with various methodologies to ensure the learnable bandwidth in the ILC system to be set with a balance between learning performance and learning stability. The sampled data implementation ensures effective execution of ILC in practical dynamic systems. The presented sampled data ILC methods also ensure the balance of performance and stability of learning process. Furthermore, the presented theories and methodologies are tested with an ILC controlled robotic system. The experimental results show that the machines can work in much higher accuracy than a feedback control alone can offer. With the proposed ILC algorithms, it is possible that machines can work to their hardware design limits set by sensors and actuators. The target audience for this book includes scientists, engineers and practitioners involved in any systems with repetitive operations.

The Second Law, a cornerstone of thermodynamics, governs the average direction of dissipative, non-equilibrium processes. But it says nothing about their actual rates or the probability of fluctuations about the average. This interdisciplinary book, written and peer-reviewed by international experts, presents recent advances in the search for new non-equilibrium principles beyond the Second Law, and their applications to a wide range of systems across physics, chemistry and biology. Beyond The Second Law brings together traditionally isolated areas of non-equilibrium research and highlights potentially fruitful connections between them, with entropy production playing the unifying role. Key theoretical concepts include the Maximum Entropy Production principle, the Fluctuation Theorem, and the Maximum Entropy method of statistical inference. Applications of these principles are illustrated in such diverse fields as climatology, cosmology, crystal growth morphology, Earth system science, environmental physics, evolutionary biology and technology, fluid turbulence, microbial biogeochemistry, plasma physics, and radiative transport, using a wide variety of analytical and experimental techniques. Beyond The Second Law will appeal to students and researchers wishing to gain an understanding of entropy production and its central place in the science of non-equilibrium systems – both in detail and in terms of the bigger picture.

Neural field theory has a long-standing tradition in the mathematical and computational neurosciences. Beginning almost 50 years ago with seminal work by Griffiths and culminating in the 1970ties with the models of Wilson and Cowan, Nunez and Amari, this important research area experienced a renaissance during the 1990ties by the groups of Ermentrout, Robinson, Bressloff, Wright and Haken. Since then, much progress has been made in both, the development of mathematical and numerical techniques and in physiological refinement und understanding. In contrast to large-scale neural network models described by huge connectivity matrices that are computationally expensive in numerical simulations, neural field models described by connectivity kernels allow for analytical treatment by means of methods from functional analysis. Thus, a number of rigorous results on the existence of bump and wave solutions or on inverse kernel construction problems are nowadays available. Moreover, neural fields provide an important interface for the coupling of neural activity to experimentally observable data, such as the electroencephalogram (EEG) or functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). And finally, neural fields over rather abstract feature spaces, also called dynamic fields, found successful applications in the cognitive sciences and in robotics. Up to now, research results in neural field theory have been disseminated across a number of distinct journals from mathematics, computational neuroscience, biophysics, cognitive science and others. There is no comprehensive collection of results or reviews available yet. With our proposed book Neural Field Theory, we aim at filling this gap in the market. We received consent from some of the leading scientists in the field, who are willing to write contributions for the book, among them are two of the founding-fathers of neural field theory: Shun-ichi Amari and Jack Cowan.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 19th International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications, held at Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman in May 2013. The conference brought together experts and novices in the theory and applications of difference equations and discrete dynamical systems. The volume features papers in difference equations and discrete time dynamical systems with applications to mathematical sciences and, in particular, mathematical biology, ecology, and epidemiology.  It includes four invited papers and eight contributed papers. Topics covered include: competitive exclusion through discrete time models, Benford solutions of linear difference equations, chaos and wild chaos in Lorenz-type systems, advances in periodic difference equations, the periodic decomposition problem, dynamic selection systems and replicator equations, and asymptotic equivalence of difference equations in Banach Space. This book will appeal to researchers, scientists, and educators who work in the fields of difference equations, discrete time dynamical systems and their applications.

This text focuses on a variety of topics in mathematics in common usage in graduate engineering programs including vector calculus, linear and nonlinear ordinary differential equations, approximation methods, vector spaces, linear algebra, integral equations and dynamical systems. The book is designed for engineering graduate students who wonder how much of their basic mathematics will be of use in practice. Following development of the underlying analysis, the book takes students through a large number of examples that have been worked in detail. Students can choose to go through each step or to skip ahead if they so desire. After seeing all the intermediate steps, they will be in a better position to know what is expected of them when solving assignments, examination problems, and when on the job. Chapters conclude with exercises for the student that reinforce the chapter content and help connect the subject matter to a variety of engineering problems. Students have grown up with computer-based tools including numerical calculations and computer graphics; the worked-out examples as well as the end-of-chapter exercises often use computers for numerical and symbolic computations and for graphical display of the results.

This book provides an accessible introduction to the variational formulation of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, with a novel emphasis on global descriptions of the dynamics, which is a significant conceptual departure from more traditional approaches based on the use of local coordinates on the configuration manifold. In particular, we introduce a general methodology for obtaining globally valid equations of motion on configuration manifolds that are Lie groups, homogeneous spaces, and embedded manifolds, thereby avoiding the difficulties associated with coordinate singularities. The material is presented in an approachable fashion by considering concrete configuration manifolds of increasing complexity, which then motivates and naturally leads to the more general formulation that follows. Understanding of the material is enhanced by numerous in-depth examples throughout the book, culminating in non-trivial applications involving multi-body systems. This book is written for a general audience of mathematicians, engineers, and physicists with a basic knowledge of mechanics. Some basic background in differential geometry is helpful, but not essential, as the relevant concepts are introduced in the book, thereby making the material accessible to a broad audience, and suitable for either self-study or as the basis for a graduate course in applied mathematics, engineering, or physics.

Providing an elementary introduction to analytic continuation and monodromy, the first part of this volume applies these notions to the local and global study of complex linear differential equations, their formal solutions at singular points, their monodromy and their differential Galois groups. The Riemann-Hilbert problem is discussed from Bolibrukh's point of view. The second part expounds 1-summability and Ecalle's theory of resurgence under fairly general conditions. It contains numerous examples and presents an analysis of the singularities in the Borel plane via "alien calculus", which provides a full description of the Stokes phenomenon for linear or non-linear differential or difference equations. The first of a series of three, entitled Divergent Series, Summability and Resurgence, this volume is aimed at graduate students, mathematicians and theoretical physicists interested in geometric, algebraic or local analytic properties of dynamical systems. It includes useful exercises with solutions. The prerequisites are a working knowledge of elementary complex analysis and differential algebra.

The appearance of weakly wandering (ww) sets and sequences for ergodic transformations over half a century ago was an unexpected and surprising event. In time it was shown that ww and related sequences reflected significant and deep properties of ergodic transformations that preserve an infinite measure. This monograph studies in a systematic way the role of ww and related sequences in the classification of ergodic transformations preserving an infinite measure. Connections of these sequences to additive number theory and tilings of the integers are also discussed. The material presented is self-contained and accessible to graduate students. A basic knowledge of measure theory is adequate for the reader.

The book details a few of the novel methods developed in the last few years for studying various aspects of nonlinear wave systems. The introductory chapter provides a general overview, thematically linking the objects described in the book. Two chapters are devoted to wave systems possessing resonances with linear frequencies (Chapter 2) and with nonlinear frequencies (Chapter 3). In the next two chapters modulation instability in the KdV-type of equations is studied using rigorous mathematical methods (Chapter 4) and its possible connection to freak waves is investigated (Chapter 5). The book goes on to demonstrate how the choice of the Hamiltonian (Chapter 6) or the Lagrangian (Chapter 7) framework allows us to gain a deeper insight into the properties of a specific wave system. The final chapter discusses problems encountered when attempting to verify the theoretical predictions using numerical or laboratory experiments. All the chapters are illustrated by ample constructive examples demonstrating the applicability of these novel methods and approaches to a wide class of evolutionary dispersive PDEs, e.g. equations from Benjamin-Oro, Boussinesq, Hasegawa-Mima, KdV-type, Klein-Gordon, NLS-type, Serre, Shamel , Whitham and Zakharov. This makes the book interesting for professionals in the fields of nonlinear physics, applied mathematics and fluid mechanics as well as students who are studying these subjects. The book can also be used as a basis for a one-semester lecture course in applied mathematics or mathematical physics.

The aim of this volume is two-fold. First, to show how the resurgent methods introduced in volume 1 can be applied efficiently in a non-linear setting; to this end further properties of the resurgence theory must be developed. Second, to analyze the fundamental example of the First Painleve equation. The resurgent analysis of singularities is pushed all the way up to the so-called "bridge equation", which concentrates all information about the non-linear Stokes phenomenon at infinity of the First Painleve equation. The third in a series of three, entitled Divergent Series, Summability and Resurgence, this volume is aimed at graduate students, mathematicians and theoretical physicists who are interested in divergent power series and related problems, such as the Stokes phenomenon. The prerequisites are a working knowledge of complex analysis at the first-year graduate level and of the theory of resurgence, as presented in volume 1.

From Hamiltonian Chaos to Complex Systems: A Nonlinear Physics Approach collects contributions on recent developments in non-linear dynamics and statistical physics with an emphasis on complex systems. This book provides a wide range of state-of-the-art research in these fields. The unifying aspect of this book is demonstration of how similar tools coming from dynamical systems, nonlinear physics, and statistical dynamics can lead to a large panorama of research in various fields of physics and beyond, most notably with the perspective of application in complex systems.

This self-contained set of lectures addresses a gap in the literature by providing a systematic link between the theoretical foundations of the subject matter and cutting-edge applications in both geophysical fluid dynamics and nonlinear optics. Rogue and shock waves are phenomena that may occur in the propagation of waves in any nonlinear dispersive medium. Accordingly, they have been observed in disparate settings - as ocean waves, in nonlinear optics, in Bose-Einstein condensates, and in plasmas. Rogue and dispersive shock waves are both characterized by the development of extremes: for the former, the wave amplitude becomes unusually large, while for the latter, gradients reach extreme values. Both aspects strongly influence the statistical properties of the wave propagation and are thus considered together here in terms of their underlying theoretical treatment. This book offers a self-contained graduate-level text intended as both an introduction and reference guide for a new generation of scientists working on rogue and shock wave phenomena across a broad range of fields in applied physics and geophysics.

This book presents a proof of universal computation in the Game of Life cellular automaton by using a Turing machine construction. It provides an introduction including background information and an extended review of the literature for Turing Machines, Counter Machines and the relevant patterns in Conway's Game of Life so that the subject matter is accessibly to non specialists. The book contains a description of the author’s Turing machine in Conway’s Game of Life including an unlimited storage tape provided by growing stack structures and it also presents a fast universal Turing machine designed to allow the working to be demonstrated in a convenient period of time.  

Nonlinear dynamics has been enjoying a vast development for nearly four decades resulting in a range of well established theory, with the potential to significantly enhance performance, effectiveness, reliability and safety of physical systems as well as offering novel technologies and designs. By critically appraising the state of the art, it is now time to develop design criteria and technology for new generation products/processes operating on principles of nonlinear interaction and in the nonlinear regime, leading to more effective, sensitive, accurate, and durable methods than what is currently available. This new approach is expected to radically influence the design, control and exploitation paradigms, in a magnitude of contexts. With a strong emphasis on experimentally calibrated and validated models, contributions by top-level international experts will foster future directions for the development of engineering technologies and design using robust nonlinear dynamics modelling and analysis.

Progress in Partial Differential Equations is devoted to modern topics in the theory of partial differential equations. It consists of both original articles and survey papers covering a wide scope of research topics in partial differential equations and their applications. The contributors were participants of the 8th ISAAC congress in Moscow in 2011 or are members of the PDE interest group of the ISAAC society. This volume is addressed to graduate students at various levels as well as researchers in partial differential equations and related fields. The readers will find this an excellent resource of both introductory and advanced material. The key topics are: * Linear hyperbolic equations and systems (scattering, symmetrisers) * Non-linear wave models (global existence, decay estimates, blow-up) * Evolution equations (control theory, well-posedness, smoothing) * Elliptic equations (uniqueness, non-uniqueness, positive solutions) * Special models from applications (Kirchhoff equation, Zakharov-Kuznetsov equation, thermoelasticity)

This book covers solid mechanics for non-linear elastic and elastoplastic materials, describing the behaviour of ductile material subject to extreme mechanical loading and its eventual failure. The book highlights constitutive features to describe the behaviour of frictional materials such as geological media. On the basis of this theory, including large strain and inelastic behaviours, bifurcation and instability are developed with a special focus on the modelling of the emergence of local instabilities such as shear band formation and flutter of a continuum. The former is regarded as a precursor of fracture, while the latter is typical of granular materials. The treatment is complemented with qualitative experiments, illustrations from everyday life and simple examples taken from structural mechanics.

This volume is the first of the new series Advances in Dynamics and Delays. It offers the latest advances in the research of analyzing and controlling dynamical systems with delays, which arise in many real-world problems. The contributions in this series are a collection across various disciplines, encompassing engineering, physics, biology, and economics, and some are extensions of those presented at the IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) conferences since 2011. The series is categorized in five parts covering the main themes of the contributions: ·         Stability Analysis and Control Design ·         Networks and Graphs ·         Time Delay and Sampled-Data Systems ·         Computational  and Software Tools ·         Applications This volume will become a good reference point for researchers and PhD students in the field of delay systems, and for those willing to learn more about the field, and it will also be a resource for control engineers, who will find innovative control methodologies for relevant applications, from both theory and numerical analysis perspectives.