In the past ten years, there has been much progress in understanding the global dynamics of systems with several degrees-of-freedom. An important tool in these studies has been the theory of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds and foliations of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds. In recent years these techniques have been used for the development of global perturbation methods, the study of resonance phenomena in coupled oscillators, geometric singular perturbation theory, and the study of bursting phenomena in biological oscillators. "Invariant manifold theorems" have become standard tools for applied mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and virtually anyone working on nonlinear problems from a geometric viewpoint. In this book, the author gives a self-contained development of these ideas as well as proofs of the main theorems along the lines of the seminal works of Fenichel. In general, the Fenichel theory is very valuable for many applications, but it is not easy for people to get into from existing literature. This book provides an excellent avenue to that. Wiggins also describes a variety of settings where these techniques can be used in applications.

A unified treatment of resonant problems with special emphasis on the recently discovered phenomenon of homoclinic jumping. After a survey of the necessary background, the book develops a general finite dimensional theory of homoclinic jumping, illustrating it with examples. The main mechanism of chaos near resonances is discussed in both the dissipative and the Hamiltonian context, incorporating previously unpublished new results on universal homoclinic bifurcations near resonances, as well as on multi-pulse Silnikov manifolds. The results are applied to a variety of different problems, which include applications from beam oscillations, surface wave dynamics, nonlinear optics, atmospheric science and fluid mechanics.

Resonances are ubiquitous in dynamical systems with many degrees of freedom. They have the basic effect of introducing slow-fast behavior in an evolutionary system which, coupled with instabilities, can result in highly irregular behavior. This book gives a unified treatment of resonant problems with special emphasis on the recently discovered phenomenon of homoclinic jumping. After a survey of the necessary background, a general finite dimensional theory of homoclinic jumping is developed and illustrated with examples. The main mechanism of chaos near resonances is discussed in both the dissipative and the Hamiltonian context. Previously unpublished new results on universal homoclinic bifurcations near resonances, as well as on multi-pulse Silnikov manifolds are described. The results are applied to a variety of different problems, which include applications from beam oscillations, surface wave dynamics, nonlinear optics, atmospheric science and fluid mechanics. The theory is further used to study resonances in Hamiltonian systems with applications to molecular dynamics and rigid body motion. The final chapter contains an infinite dimensional extension of the finite dimensional theory, with application to the perturbed nonlinear Schrodinger equation and coupled NLS equations."

In the past ten years, there has been much progress in understanding the global dynamics of systems with several degrees-of-freedom. An important tool in these studies has been the theory of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds and foliations of normally hyperbolic invariant manifolds. In recent years these techniques have been used for the development of global perturbation methods, the study of resonance phenomena in coupled oscillators, geometric singular perturbation theory, and the study of bursting phenomena in biological oscillators. "Invariant manifold theorems" have become standard tools for applied mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and virtually anyone working on nonlinear problems from a geometric viewpoint. In this book, the author gives a self-contained development of these ideas as well as proofs of the main theorems along the lines of the seminal works of Fenichel. In general, the Fenichel theory is very valuable for many applications, but it is not easy for people to get into from existing literature. This book provides an excellent avenue to that. Wiggins also describes a variety of settings where these techniques can be used in applications.