Anastasios Bountis

We investigate different aspects of chaotic dynamics in Hénon maps of dimension higher than 2. First, we review recent results on the existence of homoclinic points in 2-d and 4-d such maps, by demonstrating how they can be located with great accuracy using the parametrization method. Then we turn our attention to perturbations of Hénon maps by an angle variable that are defined on the solid torus, and prove the existence of uniformly hyperbolic solenoid attractors for an open set of parameters.We thus argue that higher-dimensional Hénon maps exhibit a rich variety of chaotic behavior that deserves to be further studied in a systematic way.

The Painlevé and weak Painlevé conjectures have been used widely to identify new integrable nonlinear dynamical systems. For a system which passes the Painlevé test, the calculation of the integrals relies on a variety of methods which are independent from Painlevé analysis. The present paper proposes an explicit algorithm to build first integrals of a dynamical system, expressed as "quasi-polynomial" functions, from the information provided solely by the Painlevé–Laurent series solutions of a system of ODEs. Restrictions on the number and form of quasi-monomial terms appearing in a quasi-polynomial integral are obtained by an application of a theorem by Yoshida (1983). The integrals are obtained by a proper balancing of the coefficients in a quasi-polynomial function selected as initial ansatz for the integral, so that all dependence on powers of the time $\tau = t – t_0$ is eliminated. Both right and left Painlevé series are useful in the method. Alternatively, the method can be used to show the non-existence of a quasi-polynomial first integral. Examples from specific dynamical systems are given.

In this paper we examine an integrable and a non-integrable class of the first order nonlinear ordinary differential equations of the type $\dot{x}=x - x^n + \varepsilon g(t)$, $x \in \mathbb{C}$, $n \in \mathbb{N}$. We exploit, using the analysis proposed in [1], the asymptotic formulas which give the location of the singularities in the complex plane and show that there is an essential difference regarding the formation and the density of the singularities between the cases $g(t)=1$ and $g(t)=t$. Our analytical results are combined with a numerical study of the solutions in the complex time plane.

Mel'nikov's perturbation method for showing the existence of transversal intersections between invariant manifolds of saddle fixed points of dynamical systems is extended here to second order in a small parameter $\epsilon$. More specifically, we follow an approach due to Wiggins and derive a formula for the second order Mel'nikov vector of a class of periodically perturbed $n$-degree of freedom Hamiltonian systems. Based on the simple zero of this vector, we prove an $O(\epsilon^2)$ sufficient condition for the existence of isolated homoclinic (or heteroclinic) orbits, in the case that the first order Mel'nikov vector vanishes identically. Our result is applied to a damped, periodically driven $1$-degree-of-freedom Hamiltonian and good agreement is obtained between theory and experiment, concerning the threshold of heteroclinic tangency.