Synopsis
What's in a name? The original title of our book, Regular and Stochastic Motion, was chosen to emphasize Hamiltonian dynamics and the physical motion of bodies. The new edition is more evenhanded, with considerably more discussion of dissipative systems and dynamics not involving physical motion. To reflect this partial change of emphasis, we have substituted the more general terms in our title. The common usage of the new terms clarifies the emphasis of the book. The main change in the book has been to expand the sections on dissipative dynamics, including discussion of renormalization, circle maps, intermittancy, crises, transient chaos, multifractals, reconstruction, and coupled mapping systems. These topics were either mainly in the mathemati cal literature or essentially unstudied when our first edition was written. The volume of work in these areas has surpassed that in Hamiltonian dynamics within the past few years. We have also made changes in the Hamiltonian sections, adding many new topics such as more general transformation and stability theory, connected stochasticity in two-dimensional maps, converse KAM theory, new topics in diffusion theory, and an approach to equilibrium in many dimensions. Other sections such as mapping models have been revised to take into account new perspectives. We have also corrected a number of misprints and clarified various arguments with the help of colleagues and students, some of whom we acknowledge below. We have again chosen not to treat quantum chaos, partly due to our own lack ofacquaintance with the subject.
Synopsis
This book treats nonlinear dynamics in both Hamiltonian and dissipative systems. The emphasis is on the mechanics for generating chaotic motion, methods of calculating the transitions from regular to chaotic motion, and the dynamical and statistical properties of the dynamics when it is chaotic. The book is intended as a self consistent treatment of the subject at the graduate level and as a reference for scientists already working in the field. It emphasizes both methods of calculation and results. It is accessible to physicists and engineers without training in modern mathematics. The new edition brings the subject matter in a rapidly expanding field up to date, and has greatly expanded the treatment of dissipative dynamics to include most important subjects. It can be used as a graduate text for a two semester course covering both Hamiltonian and dissipative dynamics.
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