This book highlights recent compelling research results and trends in various aspects of contemporary mathematics, emphasizing applicabilitions to real-world situations. The chapters present exciting new findings and developments in situations where mathematical rigor is combined with common sense. A multi-disciplinary approach, both within each chapter and in the volume as a whole, leads to practical insights that may result in a more synthetic understanding of specific global issues as well as their possible solutions. The volume will be of interest not only to experts in mathematics, but also to graduate students, scientists, and practitioners from other fields including physics, biology, geology, management, and medicine.

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 book explores topics that are central to the field of spacecraft attitude determination and control. The authors provide rigorous theoretical derivations of significant algorithms accompanied by a generous amount of qualitative discussions of the subject matter. The book documents the development of the important concepts and methods in a manner accessible to practicing engineers, graduate-level engineering students and applied mathematicians. It includes detailed examples from actual mission designs to help ease the transition from theory to practice and also provides prototype algorithms that are readily available on the author's website. Subject matter includes both theoretical derivations and practical implementation of spacecraft attitude determination and control systems. It provides detailed derivations for attitude kinematics and dynamics and provides detailed description of the most widely used attitude parameterization, the quaternion. This title also provides a thorough treatise of attitude dynamics including Jacobian elliptical functions. It is the first known book to provide detailed derivations and explanations of state attitude determination and gives readers real-world examples from actual working spacecraft missions. The subject matter is chosen to fill the void of existing textbooks and treatises, especially in state and dynamics attitude determination. MATLAB code of all examples will be provided through an external website.

This award-winning thesis investigates the mechanisms underlying cardiac arrhythmia development and termination from an entirely new perspective. By viewing the heart as a complex system, the author uses theoretical tools from nonlinear dynamics combined with numerical simulations and experiments to achieve insights into the relationship between its structure and dynamics, thereby paving the way towards innovative low-energy defibrillation strategies. The work tackles, among other things: the effect of substrate heterogeneity on the spatial-temporal dynamics of cardiac arrhythmias and ways in which weak pulsed electric fields can be used to control these dynamics in heterogeneous cardiac tissue. The long-term vision of this research is to replace the current strategy of applying painful and sometimes tissue damaging electric shock – currently the only reliable way to terminate life-threatening fibrillation – by a more subtle but equally effective intervention. The book maps out a number of promising research directions for biophysicists and medical researchers working on the origins and treatment of cardiac arrhythmias.

This thesis focuses on the dynamics of autonomous Boolean networks, on the basis of Boolean logic functions in continuous time without external clocking. These networks are realized with integrated circuits on an electronic chip as a field programmable gate array (FPGA) with roughly 100,000 logic gates, offering an extremely flexible model system. It allows fast and cheap design cycles and large networks with arbitrary topologies and coupling delays. The author presents pioneering results on theoretical modeling, experimental realization, and selected applications. In this regard, three classes of novel dynamic behavior are investigated: (i) Chaotic Boolean networks are proposed as high-speed physical random number generators with high bit rates. (ii) Networks of periodic Boolean oscillators are home to long-living transient chimera states, i.e., novel patterns of coexisting domains of spatially coherent (synchronized) and incoherent (desynchronized) dynamics. (iii) Excitable networks exhibit cluster synchronization and can be used as fast artificial Boolean neurons whose spiking patterns can be controlled. This work presents the first experimental platform for large complex networks, which will facilitate exciting future developments.

This book contains papers based on talks given at the International Conference Dynamical Systems: 100 years after Poincaré held at the University of Oviedo, Gijón in Spain, September 2012. It provides an overview of the state of the art in the study of dynamical systems.   This book covers a broad range of topics, focusing on discrete and continuous dynamical systems, bifurcation theory, celestial mechanics, delay difference and differential equations, Hamiltonian systems and also the classic challenges in planar vector fields. It also details recent advances and new trends in the field, including applications to a wide range of disciplines such as biology, chemistry, physics and economics.    The memory of Henri Poincaré, who laid the foundations of the subject, inspired this exploration of dynamical systems. In honor of this remarkable mathematician, theoretical physicist, engineer and philosopher, the authors have made a special effort to place the reader at the frontiers of current knowledge in the discipline.

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 book collects papers presented during the European Workshop on High Order Nonlinear Numerical Methods for Evolutionary PDEs (HONOM 2013) that was held at INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, Talence, France in March, 2013. The central topic is high order methods for compressible fluid dynamics. In the workshop, and in this proceedings, greater emphasis is placed on the numerical than the theoretical aspects of this scientific field. The range of topics is broad, extending through algorithm design, accuracy, large scale computing, complex geometries, discontinuous Galerkin, finite element methods, Lagrangian hydrodynamics, finite difference methods and applications and uncertainty quantification. These techniques find practical applications in such fields as fluid mechanics, magnetohydrodynamics, nonlinear solid mechanics, and others for which genuinely nonlinear methods are needed.

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.

This text is a short yet complete course on nonlinear dynamics of deterministic systems. Conceived as a modular set of 15 concise lectures it reflects the many years of teaching experience by the authors. The lectures treat in turn the fundamental aspects of the theory of dynamical systems, aspects of stability and bifurcations, the theory of deterministic chaos and attractor dimensions, as well as the elements of the theory of Poincare recurrences.Particular attention is paid to the analysis of the generation of periodic, quasiperiodic and chaotic self-sustained oscillations and to the issue of synchronization in such systems. This book is aimed at graduate students and non-specialist researchers with a background in physics, applied mathematics and engineering wishing to enter this exciting field of research.

Dynamics, Games and Science I and II are a selection of surveys and research articles written by leading researchers in mathematics. The majority of the contributions are on dynamical systems and game theory, focusing either on fundamental and theoretical developments or on applications to modeling in biology, ecomonics, engineering, finances and psychology. The papers are based on talks given at the International Conference DYNA 2008, held in honor of Mauricio Peixoto and David Rand at the University of Braga, Portugal, on September 8-12, 2008. The aim of these volumes is to present cutting-edge research in these areas to encourage graduate students and researchers in mathematics and other fields to develop them further.

This book is focused on the nonlinear theoretical and mathematical problems associated with ultrafast intense laser pulse propagation in gases and in particular, in air. With the aim of understanding the physics of filamentation in gases, solids, the atmosphere, and even biological tissue, specialists in nonlinear optics and filamentation from both physics and mathematics attempt to rigorously derive and analyze relevant non-perturbative models. Modern laser technology allows the generation of ultrafast (few cycle) laser pulses, with intensities exceeding the internal electric field in atoms and molecules (E=5x109 V/cm or intensity I = 3.5 x 1016 Watts/cm2 ). The interaction of such pulses with atoms and molecules leads to new, highly nonlinear nonperturbative regimes, where new physical phenomena, such as High Harmonic Generation (HHG), occur, and from which the shortest (attosecond - the natural time scale of the electron) pulses have been created. One of the major experimental discoveries in this nonlinear nonperturbative regime, Laser Pulse Filamentation, was observed by Mourou and Braun in 1995, as the propagation of pulses over large distances with narrow and intense cones. This observation has led to intensive investigation in physics and applied mathematics of new effects such as self-transformation of these pulses into white light, intensity clamping, and multiple filamentation, as well as to potential applications to wave guide writing, atmospheric remote sensing, lightning guiding, and military long-range weapons. The increasing power of high performance computers and the mathematical modelling and simulation of photonic systems has enabled many new areas of research. With contributions by theorists and mathematicians, supplemented by active experimentalists who are experts in the field of nonlinear laser molecule interaction and propagation, Laser Filamentation sheds new light on scientific and industrial applications of modern lasers.

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.

This book is devoted to background material and recently developed mathematical methods in the study of infinite-dimensional dissipative systems. The theory of such systems is motivated by the long-term goal to establish rigorous mathematical models for turbulent and chaotic phenomena. The aim here is to offer general methods and abstract results pertaining to fundamental dynamical systems properties related to dissipative long-time behavior. The book systematically presents, develops and uses the quasi-stability method while substantially extending it by including for consideration new classes of models and PDE systems arising in Continuum Mechanics. The book can be used as a textbook in dissipative dynamics at the graduate level. Igor Chueshov is a Professor of Mathematics at Karazin Kharkov National University in Kharkov, Ukraine.

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.

This book features survey and research papers from The Abel Symposium 2011: Algebras, quivers and representations, held in Balestrand, Norway 2011. It examines a very active research area that has had a growing influence and profound impact in many other areas of mathematics like, commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, algebraic groups and combinatorics. This volume illustrates and extends such connections with algebraic geometry, cluster algebra theory, commutative algebra, dynamical systems and triangulated categories. In addition, it includes contributions on further developments in representation theory of quivers and algebras. Algebras, Quivers and Representations is targeted at researchers and graduate students in algebra, representation theory and triangulate categories.

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.

This book provides a crash course on various methods from the bifurcation theory of Functional Differential Equations (FDEs). FDEs arise very naturally in economics, life sciences and engineering and the study of FDEs has been a major source of inspiration for advancement in nonlinear analysis and infinite dimensional dynamical systems. The book summarizes some practical and general approaches and frameworks for the investigation of bifurcation phenomena of FDEs depending on parameters with chap. This well illustrated book aims to be self contained so the readers will find in this book all relevant materials in bifurcation, dynamical systems with symmetry, functional differential equations, normal forms and center manifold reduction. This material was used in graduate courses on functional differential equations at Hunan University (China) and York University (Canada).

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.

Dynamics of Information Systems: Algorithmic Approaches presents recent developments and results found by participants of the Fourth International Conference on the Dynamics of Information Systems, which took place at the University of Florida, Gainesville FL, USA on February 20-22, 2012. The purpose of this conference was to bring together scientists and engineers from industry, government, and universities to exchange knowledge and results in a broad range of topics relevant to the theory and practice of the dynamics of information systems. Dynamics of Information plays an increasingly critical role in our society. The influence of information on social, biological, genetic, and military systems must be better understood to achieve large advances in the capability and understanding of these systems. Applications are widespread and include: detection of terrorist networks, design of highly efficient businesses, computer networks, quantum entanglement, genome modeling, multi-robotic systems, and industrial and manufacturing safety. The book contains state-of-the-art work on theory and practice relevant to the dynamics of information systems. It covers algorithmic approaches to numerical computations with infinite and infinitesimal numbers; presents important problems arising in service-oriented systems, such as dynamic composition and analysis of modern service-oriented information systems and estimation of customer service times on a rail network from GPS data; addresses the complexity of the problems arising in stochastic and distributed systems; and discusses modulating communication for improving multi-agent learning convergence. Network issues-in particular minimum-risk maximum-clique problems, vulnerability of sensor networks, influence diffusion, community detection, and link prediction in social network analysis, as well as a comparative analysis of algorithms for transmission network expansion planning-are described in later chapters.

Dynamical and vibratory systems are basically an application of mathematics and applied sciences to the solution of real world problems. Before being able to solve real world problems, it is necessary to carefully study dynamical and vibratory systems and solve all available problems in case of linear and nonlinear equations using analytical and numerical methods. It is of great importance to study nonlinearity in dynamics and vibration; because almost all applied processes act nonlinearly, and on the other hand, nonlinear analysis of complex systems is one of the most important and complicated tasks, especially in engineering and applied sciences problems. There are probably a handful of books on nonlinear dynamics and vibrations analysis. Some of these books are written at a fundamental level that may not meet ambitious engineering program requirements. Others are specialized in certain fields of oscillatory systems, including modeling and simulations. In this book, we attempt to strike a balance between theory and practice, fundamentals and advanced subjects, and generality and specialization. None of the books in this area have completely studied and analyzed nonlinear equation in dynamical and vibratory systems using the latest analytical and numerical methods, so that the user can solve the problems without the need of studying too many different references. Thereby in this book, by the use of the latest analytic, numeric laboratorial methods and using more than 300 references like books, papers and the researches done by the authors and by considering almost all possible processes and situation, new theories has been proposed to encounter applied problems in engineering and applied sciences. In this way, the user (bachelor's, master's and PhD students, university teachers and even in research centers in different fields of mechanical, civil, aerospace, electrical, chemical, applied mathematics, physics, and etc.) can encounter such systems confidently. In the different chapters of the book, not only are the linear and especially nonlinear problems with oscillatory form broadly discussed, but also applied examples are practically solved by the proposed methodology.

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)

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.

We present an introduction to Berkovich's theory of non-archimedean analytic spaces that emphasizes its applications in various fields. The first part contains surveys of a foundational nature, including an introduction to Berkovich analytic spaces by M. Temkin, and to etale cohomology by A. Ducros, as well as a short note by C. Favre on the topology of some Berkovich spaces. The second part focuses on applications to geometry. A second text by A. Ducros contains a new proof of the fact that the higher direct images of a coherent sheaf under a proper map are coherent, and B. Remy, A. Thuillier and A. Werner provide an overview of their work on the compactification of Bruhat-Tits buildings using Berkovich analytic geometry. The third and final part explores the relationship between non-archimedean geometry and dynamics. A contribution by M. Jonsson contains a thorough discussion of non-archimedean dynamical systems in dimension 1 and 2. Finally a survey by J.-P. Otal gives an account of Morgan-Shalen's theory of compactification of character varieties. This book will provide the reader with enough material on the basic concepts and constructions related to Berkovich spaces to move on to more advanced research articles on the subject. We also hope that the applications presented here will inspire the reader to discover new settings where these beautiful and intricate objects might arise.

The book deals with the development of continual models of turbulent natural media. Such models serve as a ground for the statement and numerical evaluation of the key problems of the structure and evolution of the numerous astrophysical and geophysical objects. The processes of ordering (self-organization) in an originally chaotic turbulent medium are addressed and treated in detail with the use of irreversible thermodynamics and stochastic dynamics approaches which underlie the respective models. Different examples of ordering set up in the natural environment and outer space are brought and thoroughly discussed, the main focus being given to the protoplanetary discs formation and evolution.