Thirty years of turnstiles and transport.

To characterize transport in a deterministic dynamical system is to compute exit time distributions from regions or transition time distributions between regions in phase space. This paper surveys the considerable progress on this problem over the past thirty years. Primary measures of transport for volume-preserving maps include the exiting and incoming fluxes to a region. For area-preserving maps, transport is impeded by curves formed from invariant manifolds that form partial barriers, e.g., stable and unstable manifolds bounding a resonance zone or cantori, the remnants of destroyed invariant tori. When the map is exact volume preserving, a Lagrangian differential form can be used to reduce the computation of fluxes to finding a difference between the actions of certain key orbits, such as homoclinic orbits to a saddle or to a cantorus. Given a partition of phase space into regions bounded by partial barriers, a Markov tree model of transport explains key observations, such as the algebraic decay of exit and recurrence distributions.

Finite-time transport in volume-preserving flows.

Finite-time transport between distinct flow regions is of great relevance to many scientific applications, yet quantitative studies remain scarce to date. The primary obstacle is computing the evolution of material volumes, which is often infeasible due to extreme interfacial stretching. We present a framework for describing and computing finite-time transport in n-dimensional (chaotic) volume-preserving flows that relies on the reduced dynamics of an (n-2)-dimensional "minimal set" of fundamental trajectories. This approach has essential advantages over existing methods: the regions between which transport is investigated can be arbitrarily specified; no knowledge of the flow outside the finite transport interval is needed; and computational effort is substantially reduced. We demonstrate our framework in 2D for an industrial mixing device.

Simultaneous border-collision and period-doubling bifurcations.

We unfold the codimension-two simultaneous occurrence of a border-collision bifurcation and a period-doubling bifurcation for a general piecewise-smooth, continuous map. We find that with sufficient nondegeneracy conditions, a locus of period-doubling bifurcations emanates nontangentially from a locus of border-collision bifurcations. The corresponding period-doubled solution undergoes a border-collision bifurcation along a curve emanating from the codimension-two point and tangent to the period-doubling locus here. In the case that the map is one-dimensional local dynamics is completely classified; in particular, we give conditions that ensure chaos.

Discontinuity induced bifurcations in a model of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

We perform a bifurcation analysis of the mathematical model of Jones and Kompala [K.D. Jones, D.S. Kompala, Cybernetic model of the growth dynamics of Saccharomyces cerevisiae in batch and continuous cultures, J. Biotechnol. 71 (1999) 105-131]. Stable oscillations arise via Andronov-Hopf bifurcations and exist for intermediate values of the dilution rate as has been noted from experiments previously. A variety of discontinuity induced bifurcations arise from a lack of global differentiability. We identify and classify discontinuous bifurcations including several codimension-two scenarios. Bifurcation diagrams are explained by a general unfolding of these singularities.

Unfolding a codimension-two, discontinuous, Andronov-Hopf bifurcation.

We present an unfolding of the codimension-two scenario of the simultaneous occurrence of a discontinuous bifurcation and an Andronov-Hopf bifurcation in a piecewise-smooth, continuous system of autonomous ordinary differential equations in the plane. We find that the Hopf cycle undergoes a grazing bifurcation that may be very shortly followed by a saddle-node bifurcation of the orbit. We derive scaling laws for the bifurcation curves that emanate from the codimension-two bifurcation.

Volume-preserving maps with an invariant.

Several families of volume-preserving maps on R(3) that have an integral are constructed using techniques due to Suris. We study the dynamics of these maps as the topology of the two-dimensional level sets of the invariant changes. (c) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

Average exit time for volume-preserving maps.

For a volume-preserving map, we show that the exit time averaged over the entry set of a region is given by the ratio of the measure of the accessible subset of the region to that of the entry set. This result is primarily of interest to show two things: First, it gives a simple bound on the algebraic decay exponent of the survival probability. Second, it gives a tool for computing the measure of the accessible set. We use this to compute the measure of the bounded orbits for the Henon quadratic map. (c) 1997 American Institute of Physics.

Exit times and transport for symplectic twist maps.

The exit time decomposition of a set yields a description of the transport through the set as well as a visualization of the invariant structures inside it. We construct several sets computationally easier to deal with than the construction of resonances, based on the ordering properties for orbits of twist maps. Furthermore these sets can be constructed for four- and higher-dimensional twist mappings. For the four-dimensional case-using the example of Froeshle-we find "practically" invariant volumes surrounding elliptic fixed points. The boundaries of these regions are remarkably sharp; however, the regions are threaded by "tubes" of escaping orbits.

Cantori for the stadium billiard.

Although almost all orbits in the stadium billiard are "chaotic," there are many regular orbits as well-the ordered periodic orbits and cantori. The symmetries of the stadium are exploited to find maximizing and saddle periodic orbits. Cantori are maximizing quasiperiodic orbits; they have caustics. Transport in the stadium should be impeded by cantori, just as in any twist map; this is particularly important for those orbits that are nearly glancing.

Relaxation processes for a three-wave interaction model.

A system of waves coupled by three-wave, or triad, interactions is considered. A model is constructed to describe the response of a single test wave to interaction with a "heat bath" of "ambient waves." An exact solution for the relaxation of the test wave amplitude is obtained. Regimes of validity are shown for the use of a Langevin equation based on a two-time scale perturbation theory.

Numerical analysis of weakly nonlinear wave turbulence.

We consider the propagation of weakly nonlinear waves such as plasma waves, surface water waves, the interaction of laser beams with matter, particle accelerators, etc. Specifically, we study internal waves in the ocean. Hamilton's principle is used to write the fluid equations in Hamiltonian form in terms of linear eigenmode amplitudes. Numerical studies are made of the effect of Fourier grid size and resonance widths. Statistical information is generated from an ensemble of initial states of the random wave field.