The ratchet effect and the transporting islands in the chaotic sea

We study directed transport in a classical deterministic dissipative system. We consider the generic case of mixed phase space and show that large ratchet currents can be generated thanks to the presence, in the Hamiltonian limit, of transporting stability islands embedded in the chaotic sea. Due to the simultaneous presence of chaos and dissipation the stationary value of the current is independent of initial conditions, except for initial states with very small measure.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Unsteady undular bores in fully nonlinear shallow-water theory

We consider unsteady undular bores for a pair of coupled equations of Boussinesq-type which contain the familiar fully nonlinear dissipationless shallow-water dynamics and the leading-order fully nonlinear dispersive terms. This system contains one horizontal space dimension and time and can be systematically derived from the full Euler equations for irrotational flows with a free surface using a standard long-wave asymptotic expansion. In this context the system was first derived by Su and Gardner. It coincides with the one-dimensional flat-bottom reduction of the Green-Naghdi system and, additionally, has recently found a number of fluid dynamics applications other than the present context of shallow-water gravity waves. We then use the Whitham modulation theory for a one-phase periodic travelling wave to obtain an asymptotic analytical description of an undular bore in the Su-Gardner system for a full range of "depth" ratios across the bore. The positions of the leading and trailing edges of the undular bore and the amplitude of the leading solitary wave of the bore are found as functions of this "depth ratio". The formation of a partial undular bore with a rapidly-varying finite-amplitude trailing wave front is predicted for ``depth ratios'' across the bore exceeding 1.43. The analytical results from the modulation theory are shown to be in excellent agreement with full numerical solutions for the development of an undular bore in the Su-Gardner system.Comment: Revised version accepted for publication in Phys. Fluids, 51 pages, 9 figure

Transient times, resonances and drifts of attractors in dissipative rotational dynamics

In a dissipative system the time to reach an attractor is often influenced by the peculiarities of the model and in particular by the strength of the dissipation. In particular, as a dissipative model we consider the spin-orbit problem providing the dynamics of a triaxial satellite orbiting around a central planet and affected by tidal torques. The model is ruled by the oblateness parameter of the satellite, the orbital eccentricity, the dissipative parameter and the drift term. We devise a method which provides a reliable indication on the transient time which is needed to reach an attractor in the spin-orbit model; the method is based on an analytical result, precisely a suitable normal form construction. This method provides also information about the frequency of motion. A variant of such normal form used to parametrize invariant attractors provides a specific formula for the drift parameter, which in turn yields a constraint - which might be of interest in astronomical problems - between the oblateness of the satellite and its orbital eccentricity.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, colo

Pulses and Snakes in Ginzburg--Landau Equation

Using a variational formulation for partial differential equations (PDEs) combined with numerical simulations on ordinary differential equations (ODEs), we find two categories (pulses and snakes) of dissipative solitons, and analyze the dependence of both their shape and stability on the physical parameters of the cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation (CGLE). In contrast to the regular solitary waves investigated in numerous integrable and non-integrable systems over the last three decades, these dissipative solitons are not stationary in time. Rather, they are spatially confined pulse-type structures whose envelopes exhibit complicated temporal dynamics. Numerical simulations reveal very interesting bifurcations sequences as the parameters of the CGLE are varied. Our predictions on the variation of the soliton amplitude, width, position, speed and phase of the solutions using the variational formulation agree with simulation results.Comment: 30 pages, 14 figure