Cone-like Invariant Manifolds for Nonsmooth Systems

This thesis deals with rigorous mathematical techniques for higher-dimensional nonsmooth systems and their applications. The dynamical behaviour of these systems is a nonlocal problem due to the lack of smoothness. Motivated by various examples of nonsmooth systems in applications, we propose to explore the concept of invariant surfaces in the phase space which is separated by a discontinuity hypersurface. For such systems the corresponding Poincaré map can be determined; it turns out that under suitable conditions an invariant cone occurs which is characterized by a fixed point of the Poincaré map. The invariant cone seems to serve in a similar way as a generalisation of the classical center manifold for smooth differential systems. Hence, the stability of the whole system can be reduced to investigate the stability on the two-dimensional surface of the cone. Motivated to study the generation of invariant cones out of smooth systems, a numerical procedure to establish invariant cones and their stability is presented. It has been found that the flat degenerate cone in a smooth system develops under nonsmooth perturbations into a cone-like configuration. Also a simple example is used to explain a paradoxical situation concerning stability. Theoretical results concerning the existence of invariant cones and possible mechanisms responsible for the observed behavior for general three dimensional nonsmooth systems are discussed. These investigations reveal that the system possesses a rich dynamic behavior and new phenomena such as, for instance, the existence of multiple invariant cones for such system. Our approach is developed to include the case when sliding motion takes place on the manifold. Sliding dynamical equations are formulated by using Filippov's method. Existence of invariant cones containing a segment of sliding orbits are given as well as stability on these cones. Different sliding bifurcation scenarios are treated by theoretical analysis and simulation. As an application we have investigated the dynamics of an automotive brake system model under the excitation of dry friction force which has served as a motivating example to develop our concepts. This model belongs to the class of nonsmooth systems of Filippov type which is investigated from direct crossing and a sliding motion point of view. Existence of invariant cones and different types of bifurcation phenomena such as sliding periodic doubling and multiple periodic orbits are observed. Finally, extensions to nonlinear perturbations of nonsmooth linear systems have been obtained by using the nonsmooth linear system as basic system. If the basic system possesses an attractive invariant cone without sliding motion, we have shown that locally the Poincaré map contains the necessary information with regard to attractivity of the invariant cone. The existence of a generalized center manifold reduction of nonlinear system has been proven by using Hadamard graph transformation approach. A class of nonlinear systems having a cone-like invariant "manifold" is presented to illustrate the center manifold reduction and associated bifurcation. The scientific contributions of parts of this thesis are presented in [32,39,66]

Statistical properties of Lorenz like flows, recent developments and perspectives

We comment on mathematical results about the statistical behavior of Lorenz equations an its attractor, and more generally to the class of singular hyperbolic systems. The mathematical theory of such kind of systems turned out to be surprisingly difficult. It is remarkable that a rigorous proof of the existence of the Lorenz attractor was presented only around the year 2000 with a computer assisted proof together with an extension of the hyperbolic theory developed to encompass attractors robustly containing equilibria. We present some of the main results on the statisitcal behavior of such systems. We show that for attractors of three-dimensional flows, robust chaotic behavior is equivalent to the existence of certain hyperbolic structures, known as singular-hyperbolicity. These structures, in turn, are associated to the existence of physical measures: \emph{in low dimensions, robust chaotic behavior for flows ensures the existence of a physical measure}. We then give more details on recent results on the dynamics of singular-hyperbolic (Lorenz-like) attractors.Comment: 40 pages; 10 figures; Keywords: sensitive dependence on initial conditions, physical measure, singular-hyperbolicity, expansiveness, robust attractor, robust chaotic flow, positive Lyapunov exponent, large deviations, hitting and recurrence times. Minor typos corrected and precise acknowledgments of financial support added. To appear in Int J of Bif and Chaos in App Sciences and Engineerin

Renormalization in Piecewise Isometries

Interval exchange transformations (IET) are bijective piecewise translations of an interval divided into a finite partition of subintervals. Piecewise isometries (PWIs) are generalizations of IETs to higher dimension where a region is split into a number of convex sets and these are rearranged using isometries. Although PWIs are higher dimensional generalizations of IETs, their generic dynamical properties seem to be quite different. In this thesis we consider embeddings of IETs into PWIs in order to understand their similarities and differences. We investigate translated cone exchange transformations, a new family of piecewise isometries and renormalize its first return map to a subset of its partition. As a consequence we show that the existence of an embedding of an interval exchange transformation into a map of this family implies the existence of infinitely many bounded invariant sets. We also prove the existence of infinitely many periodic islands, accumulating on the real line, as well as non-ergodicity of our family of maps close to the origin. We derive some necessary conditions for existence of embeddings using combinatorial, topological and measure theoretic properties of IETs. In particular, we prove that continuous embeddings of minimal 2-IETs into orientation preserving PWIs are necessarily trivial and that any 3-PWI has at most one non-trivially continuously embedded minimal 3-IET with the same underlying permutation. Furthermore, we introduce a family of 4-PWIs with apparent abundance of invariant nonsmooth fractal curves supporting IETs, that limit to a trivial embedding of an IET. Finally, we prove that almost every interval exchange transformation, with an associated translation surface of genus $g\geq 2$, can be non-trivially and isometrically embedded into a family of piecewise isometries. In particular, this proves the existence of invariant curves for piecewise isometries, reminiscent of KAM curves for area preserving maps, which are not unions of circle arcs or line segments

Lectures on special Lagrangian geometry

We introduce special Lagrangian submanifolds in C^m and in (almost) Calabi-Yau manifolds, and survey recent results on singularities of special Lagrangian submanifolds, and their application to the SYZ Conjecture. The paper is aimed at graduate students in Geometry, String Theorists, and others wishing to learn the subject. Special Lagrangian m-folds in C^m are defined, and ways of constructing them described. 'Almost Calabi-Yau manifolds' (a generalization of Calabi-Yau manifolds useful in special Lagrangian geometry) are introduced, and the deformation theory, obstruction theory, and moduli spaces of compact special Lagrangian m-folds in (almost) Calabi-Yau m-folds are explained. Then we consider singular special Lagrangian submanifolds which are locally modelled on special Lagrangian cones with an isolated singularity at 0. Compact singular special Lagrangian submanifolds of this type have a well-behaved deformation theory, and can often be realized as limits of families of compact, nonsingular special Lagrangian submanifolds. Applications of this to the SYZ Conjecture and Mirror Symmetry of Calabi-Yau 3-folds are discussed