Stability of Periodic Points of Diffeomorphisms of Multidimensional Space

We study the diffeomorphism of a multidimensional space into itself with a hyperbolic fixed point at the origin and a nontransversal homoclinic point. From the works of Sh. Newhouse, B.F. Ivanov, L.P. Shilnikov, and other authors, it follows that there is a method of tangency for the stable and unstable manifold such that the neighborhood of a nontransversal homoclinic point can contain an infinite set of stable periodic points, but at least one of the characteristic exponents of those points tends to zero as the period increases. In this paper, we study diffeomorphisms such that the method of tangency for the stable and unstable manifold differs from the case studied in the works of the abovementioned authors. This paper continues previous works of the author, where diffeomorphisms are studied such that their Jacobi matrices at the origin have only real eigenvalues. In those previous works, we find conditions such that the neighborhood of a nontransversal homoclinic point of the studied diffeomorphism contains an infinite set of stable periodic points with characteristic exponents separated from zero. In the present paper, it is assumed that the Jacobi matrix of the original diffeomorphism at the origin has real eigenvalues and several pairs of complex conjugate eigenvalues. Under this assumption, we find conditions guaranteeing that a neighborhood of a nontransversal homoclinic point contains an infinite set of stable periodic points with characteristic exponents separated from zero.     

Diffeomorphisms of the plane with stable periodic points

We consider self-diffeomorphisms of the plane with a hyperbolic fixed point and a nontransversal homoclinic point. We show that a neighborhood of the homoclinic point may contain countably many stable periodic sets whose characteristic exponents are bounded away from zero.     

Stable Periodic Solutions of Periodic Systems of Differential Equations

An infinitely differentiable periodic two-dimensional system of differential equations is considered. It is assumed that there is a hyperbolic periodic solution and there exists a homoclinic solution to the periodic solution. It is shown that, for a certain type of tangency of the stable manifold and unstable manifold, any neighborhood of the nontransversal homoclinic solution contains a countable set of stable periodic solutions such that their characteristic exponents are separated from zero.     

Smooth diffeomorphisms of the plane with stable periodic points in a neighborhood of a homoclinic point

We consider self-diffeomorphisms of the plane of the class C ^r (1 ?? r < ??) with a fixed hyperbolic point and a nontransversal point homoclinic to it. We present a method for constructing a set of diffeomorphisms for which the neighborhood of a homoclinic point contains countably many stable periodic points with characteristic exponents bounded away from zero.     

On bifurcations of multidimensional diffeomorphisms having a homoclinic tangency to a saddle-node

We study the main bifurcations of multidimensional diffeomorphisms having a nontransversal homoclinic orbit to a saddle-node fixed point. On a parameter plane we build a bifurcation diagram for single-round periodic orbits lying entirely in a small neighborhood of the homoclinic orbit. Also, a relation of our results to the well-known codimension one bifurcations of a saddle fixed point with a quadratic homoclinic tangency and a saddle-node fixed point with a transversal homoclinic orbit is discussed.     

Diffeomorphisms of multidimensional space with infinite set of stable periodic points

Multidimensional diffeomorphisms with a hyperbolic fixed point and its homoclinic point are considered. It is shown that the neighborhood of the homoclinic point can contain an infinite set of stable periodic points whose characteristic exponents are bounded away from zero.     

Slow Passage Through the Nonhyperbolic Homoclinic Orbit of the Saddle-Center Hamiltonian Bifurcation

Slowly varying Hamiltonian systems, for which action is a well-known adiabatic invariant, are considered in the case where the system undergoes a saddle center bifurcation. We analyze the situation in which the solution slowly passes through the nonhyperbolic homoclinic orbit created at the saddle-center bifurcation. The solution near this homoclinic orbit consists of a large sequence of homoclinic orbits surrounded by near approaches to the autonomous nonlinear nonhyperbolic saddle point. By matching this solution to the strongly nonlinear oscillations obtained by averaging before and after crossing the homoclinic orbit, we determine the change in the action. If one orbit comes sufficiently close to the nonlinear saddle point, then that one saddle approach instead satisfies the nonautonomous first Painlevé equation, whose stable manifold of the unstable saddle (created in the saddle-center bifurcation) separates solutions approaching the stable center from those involving sequences of nearly homoclinic orbits.     

Stable nonperiodic points of two-dimensional C<Superscript>1</Superscript>-diffeomorphisms

It is proved that there exist two-dimensional diffeomorphisms with countably many stable periodic points in a neighborhood of a homoclinic point. The characteristic exponents of these points are negative and bounded away from zero.     

Critical homoclinic orbits lead to snap-back repellers

When nondegenerate homoclinic orbits to an expanding fixed point of a map f:X→X,X⊆Rⁿ, exist, the point is called a snap-back repeller. It is known that the relevance of a snap-back repeller (in its original definition) is due to the fact that it implies the existence of an invariant set on which the map is chaotic. However, when does the first homoclinic orbit appear? When can other homoclinic explosions, i.e., appearance of infinitely many new homoclinic orbits, occur? As noticed by many authors, these problems are still open. In this work we characterize these bifurcations, for any kind of map, smooth or piecewise smooth, continuous or discontinuous, defined in a bounded or unbounded closed set. We define a noncritical homoclinic orbit and a homoclinic orbit of an expanding fixed point is structurally stable iff it is noncritical. That is, only critical homoclinic orbits are responsible for the homoclinic explosions. The possible kinds of critical homoclinic orbits will be also investigated, as well as their dynamic role.     

Invariant manifolds of the Bonhoeffer–van der Pol oscillator

The stable and unstable manifolds of a saddle fixed point (SFP) of the Bonhoeffer–van der Pol oscillator are numerically studied. A correspondence between the existence of homoclinic tangencies (which are related to the creation or destruction of Smale horseshoes) and the chaos observed in the bifurcation diagram is described. It is observed that in the non-chaotic zones of the bifurcation diagram, there may or may not be Smale horseshoes, but there are no homoclinic tangencies.     

Numerical analysis of homoclinic orbits emanating from a Takens-Bogdanov point

It is known that branches of homoclinic orbits emanate froma singular point of a dynamical system with a double zero eigenvalue(Takens-Bogdanov point). We develop a robust numerical methodfor starting the computation of homoclinic branches near sucha point. It is shown that this starting procedure relates tobranch switching. In particular, for a certain transformed problemthe homoclinic predictor is guaranteed to converge to the trueorbit under a Newton iteration.     

Numerical approximation of homoclinic chaos

Transversal homoclinic orbits of maps are known to generate a Cantor set on which a power of the map conjugates to the Bernoulli shift on two symbols. This conjugacy may be regarded as a coding map, which for example assigns to a homoclinic symbol sequence a point in the Cantor set that lies on a homoclinic orbit of the map with a prescribed number of humps. In this paper we develop a numerical method for evaluating the conjugacy at periodic and homoclinic symbol sequences in a systematic way. The approach combines our previous method for computing the primary homoclinic orbit with the constructive proof of Smale's theorem given by Palmer. It is shown that the resulting nonlinear systems are well conditioned uniformly with respect to the characteristic length of the symbol sequence and that Newton's method converges uniformly too when started at a proper pseudo orbit. For the homoclinic symbol sequences an error analysis is given. The method works in arbitrary dimensions and it is illustrated by examples. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Heteroclinic cycles in lattice dynamical systems

A criterion of spatial chaos occurring in lattice dynamical systems—heteroclinic cycle—is discussed It is proved that if the system has asymptotically stable heteroclinic cycle, then it has asymptotically stable homoclinic point which implies spatial chaos. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.     

Bifurcations of heteroclinic loops

By generalizing the Floquet method from periodic systems to systems with exponential dichotomy, a local coordinate system is established in a neighborhood of the heteroclinic loop Γ to study the bifurcation problems of homoclinic and periodic orbits. Asymptotic expressions of the bifurcation surfaces and their relative positions are given. The results obtained in literature concerned with the 1-hom bifurcation surfaces are improved and extended to the nontransversal case. Existence regions of the 1-per orbits bifurcated from Γ are described, and the uniqueness and incoexistence of the 1-hom and 1-per orbit and the inexistence of the 2-hom and 2-per orbit are also obtained. Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 19771037) and the National Science Foundation of America # 9357622. This paper was completed when the first author was visiting Northwestern University.     

Birth of discrete Lorenz attractors at the bifurcations of 3D maps with homoclinic tangencies to saddle points

It was established in [1] that bifurcations of three-dimensional diffeomorphisms with a homoclinic tangency to a saddle-focus fixed point with the Jacobian equal to 1 can lead to Lorenz-like strange attractors. In the present paper we prove an analogous result for three-dimensional diffeomorphisms with a homoclinic tangency to a saddle fixed point with the Jacobian equal to 1, provided the quadratic homoclinic tangency under consideration is nonsimple.     

Codimension 3 nonresonant bifurcations of homoclinic orbits with two inclination flips

Homoclinic bifurcations in four-dimensional vector fields are investigated by setting up a local coordinate near a homoclinic orbit. This homoclinic orbit is principal but its stable and unstable foliations take inclination flip. The existence, nonexistence, and uniqueness of the 1-homoclinic orbit and 1-periodic orbit are studied. The existence of the two-fold 1 -periodic orbit and three-fold 1 -periodic orbit are also obtained. It is indicated that the number of periodic orbits bifurcated from this kind of homoclinic orbits depends heavily on the strength of the inclination flip.     

Homoclinic Solutions and Chaos in Ordinary Differential Equations with Singular Perturbations

Ordinary differential equations are considered which contain a singular perturbation. It is assumed that when the perturbation parameter is zero, the equation has a hyperbolic equilibrium and homoclinic solution. No restriction is placed on the dimension of the phase space or on the dimension of intersection of the stable and unstable manifolds. A bifurcation function is established which determines nonzero values of the perturbation parameter for which the homoclinic solution persists. It is further shown that when the vector field is periodic and a transversality condition is satisfied, the homoclinic solution to the perturbed equation produces a transverse homoclinic orbit in the period map. The techniques used are those of exponential dichotomies, Lyapunov-Schmidt reduction and scales of Banach spaces. A much simplified version of this latter theory is developed suitable for the present case. This work generalizes some recent results of Battelli and Palmer.

     

Transverse intersections between invariant manifolds of doubly hyperbolic invariant tori, via the Poincaré-Mel’nikov method

We consider a perturbation of an integrable Hamiltonian system having an equilibrium point of elliptic-hyperbolic type, having a homoclinic orbit. More precisely, we consider an (n + 2)-degree-of-freedom near integrable Hamiltonian with n centers and 2 saddles, and assume that the homoclinic orbit is preserved under the perturbation. On the center manifold near the equilibrium, there is a Cantorian family of hyperbolic KAM tori, and we study the homoclinic intersections between the stable and unstable manifolds associated to such tori. We establish that, in general, the manifolds intersect along transverse homoclinic orbits. In a more concrete model, such homoclinic orbits can be detected, in a first approximation, from nondegenerate critical points of a Mel’nikov potential. We provide bounds for the number of transverse homoclinic orbits using that, in general, the potential will be a Morse function (which gives a lower bound) and can be approximated by a trigonometric polynomial (which gives an upper bound).     

Existence d'orbites homoclines à un équilibre elliptique,pour un système réversible

We consider a reversible vector field in ℝ⁴, where the origin is a critical point, and where the differential at the origin has a pair of double non semisimple pure imaginary eigenvalues ±iw. We assume that the coefficient ε of a cubic term of the normal form is positive and close to 0, and that a certain coefficient of order 5 is negative. Then we show that there exist two reversible orbits homoclinic to the origin, of size √ε and such that they oscillate with a damping in 1/t when t tends towards ±∞. For obtaining such a result, we give explicitly the inverse of the linearized operator around the reversible homoclinics of the normal form, and solve the problem by a fixed point argument.     

Common homoclinic points of commuting toral automorphisms

The points homoclinic to 0 under a hyperbolic toral automorphism form the intersection of the stable and unstable manifolds of 0. This is a subgroup isomorphic to the fundamental group of the torus. Suppose that two hyperbolic toral automorphisms commute so that they determine a ℤ²-action, which we assume is irreducible. We show, by an algebraic investigation of their eigenspaces, that they either have exactly the same homoclinic points or have no homoclinic point in common except 0 itself. We prove the corresponding result for a compact connected abelian group, and compare the two proofs. The second author would like to thank the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society for partial support while this work was done.