Quadratic Volume-Preserving Maps: Invariant Circles and Bifurcations

We study the dynamics of the five-parameter quadratic family of volume-preserving diffeomorphisms of R^3. This family is the unfolded normal form for a bifurcation of a fixed point with a triple-one multiplier and also is the general form of a quadratic three-dimensional map with a quadratic inverse. Much of the nontrivial dynamics of this map occurs when its two fixed points are saddle-foci with intersecting two-dimensional stable and unstable manifolds that bound a spherical ``vortex-bubble''. We show that this occurs near a saddle-center-Neimark-Sacker (SCNS) bifurcation that also creates, at least in its normal form, an elliptic invariant circle. We develop a simple algorithm to accurately compute these elliptic invariant circles and their longitudinal and transverse rotation numbers and use it to study their bifurcations, classifying them by the resonances between the rotation numbers. In particular, rational values of the longitudinal rotation number are shown to give rise to a string of pearls that creates multiple copies of the original spherical structure for an iterate of the map.Comment: 53 pages, 29 figure

Generalizations of the St\"ormer Problem for Dust Grain Orbits

We consider the generalized St\"ormer Problem that includes the electromagnetic and gravitational forces on a charged dust grain near a planet. For dust grains a typical charge to mass ratio is such that neither force can be neglected. Including the gravitational force gives rise to stable circular orbits that encircle that plane entirely above/below the equatorial plane. The effects of the different forces are discussed in detail. A modified 3rd Kepler's law is found and analyzed for dust grains.Comment: 21 pages LaTeX, 12 figure

Resonances and Twist in Volume-Preserving Mappings

The phase space of an integrable, volume-preserving map with one action and $d$ angles is foliated by a one-parameter family of $d$-dimensional invariant tori. Perturbations of such a system may lead to chaotic dynamics and transport. We show that near a rank-one, resonant torus these mappings can be reduced to volume-preserving "standard maps." These have twist only when the image of the frequency map crosses the resonance curve transversely. We show that these maps can be approximated---using averaging theory---by the usual area-preserving twist or nontwist standard maps. The twist condition appropriate for the volume-preserving setting is shown to be distinct from the nondegeneracy condition used in (volume-preserving) KAM theory.Comment: Many typos fixed and notation simplified. New $n^{th}$ order averaging theorem and volume-preserving variant. Numerical comparison with averaging adde

Nonexistence of an integral of the 6th degree in momenta for the Zipoy-Voorhees metric

We prove nonexistence of a nontrivial integral that is polynomial in momenta of degree less than 7 for the Zipoy-Voorhees spacetime with the parameter $\delta=2$Comment: 7 pages, no figure

Vanishing Twist near Focus-Focus Points

We show that near a focus-focus point in a Liouville integrable Hamiltonian system with two degrees of freedom lines of locally constant rotation number in the image of the energy-momentum map are spirals determined by the eigenvalue of the equilibrium. From this representation of the rotation number we derive that the twist condition for the isoenergetic KAM condition vanishes on a curve in the image of the energy-momentum map that is transversal to the line of constant energy. In contrast to this we also show that the frequency map is non-degenerate for every point in a neighborhood of a focus-focus point.Comment: 13 page

The Lie-Poisson structure of the reduced n-body problem

The classical n-body problem in d-dimensional space is invariant under the Galilean symmetry group. We reduce by this symmetry group using the method of polynomial invariants. As a result we obtain a reduced system with a Lie-Poisson structure which is isomorphic to sp(2n-2), independently of d. The reduction preserves the natural form of the Hamiltonian as a sum of kinetic energy that depends on velocities only and a potential that depends on positions only. Hence we proceed to construct a Poisson integrator for the reduced n-body problem using a splitting method.Comment: 26 pages, 2 figure

A Poincar\'e section for the general heavy rigid body

A general recipe is developed for the study of rigid body dynamics in terms of Poincar\'e surfaces of section. A section condition is chosen which captures every trajectory on a given energy surface. The possible topological types of the corresponding surfaces of section are determined, and their 1:1 projection to a conveniently defined torus is proposed for graphical rendering.Comment: 25 pages, 10 figure

About ergodicity in the family of limacon billiards

By continuation from the hyperbolic limit of the cardioid billiard we show that there is an abundance of bifurcations in the family of limacon billiards. The statistics of these bifurcation shows that the size of the stable intervals decreases with approximately the same rate as their number increases with the period. In particular, we give numerical evidence that arbitrarily close to the cardioid there are elliptic islands due to orbits created in saddle node bifurcations. This shows explicitly that if in this one parameter family of maps ergodicity occurs for more than one parameter the set of these parameter values has a complicated structure.Comment: 17 pages, 9 figure

Topology of energy surfaces and existence of transversal Poincar\'e sections

Two questions on the topology of compact energy surfaces of natural two degrees of freedom Hamiltonian systems in a magnetic field are discussed. We show that the topology of this 3-manifold (if it is not a unit tangent bundle) is uniquely determined by the Euler characteristic of the accessible region in configuration space. In this class of 3-manifolds for most cases there does not exist a transverse and complete Poincar\'e section. We show that there are topological obstacles for its existence such that only in the cases of $S^1\times S^2$ and $T^3$ such a Poincar\'e section can exist.Comment: 10 pages, LaTe