Jan 1 2005
Jan 1 2005
CHAOS, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
| PHYS 7224 | Spring semester 2005 |
PROBLEM SETS: Please deliver solutions to problem sets by Thursday, at the lecture, or place them in Predrag's mailbox.
Lecture 1
9:35-10:55 Tue Jan 11 2005 in Howey S104
Overture
That deterministic dynamics leads to chaos is no surprise to
anyone who has tried pool, billiards or snooker - that is what the game
is about - so we start our
course about what is chaos and what to do about it by a game of pinball.
This might seem a trifle trivial, but a pinball is to chaotic dynamics
what a pendulum is to integrable systems:
thinking clearly about what
is "chaos" in a pinball will help us tackle more difficult problems, such
as computing diffusion constants in deterministic gases, or
computing the Helium spectrum.
We all have an intuitive feeling for what a pinball does as it bounces
between the pinball machine disks, and only high school level
Euclidean geometry is needed to describe the trajectory.
Turning this intuition into calculation will lead us,
in clear physically motivated steps, to almost everything one
needs to know about deterministic chaos:
from unstable dynamical flows, Poincaré sections,
Smale horseshoes, symbolic dynamics, pruning,
discrete symmetries, periodic orbits,
averaging over chaotic sets, evolution operators,
dynamical zeta functions, Fredholm determinants,
cycle expansions, quantum trace formulas and zeta functions,
and to the semiclassical quantization of helium.
Reading:
Chapter 1:
An overview of the main themes of the course.
Recommended reading before you decide to download anything else.
Appendix - A brief history of chaos:
Classical mechanics has not stood still since Newton. The formalism that
we use today was developed by Euler and Lagrange. By the end of the 1800's the
three problems that would lead to the notion of chaotic dynamics were
already known: the three-body problem, the ergodic hypothesis,
and nonlinear oscillators.
e-mail description
Exercises
problem set 1 (optional)
Rest of the schedule is
Lecture 2
9:35-10:55 Thu Jan 13
Trajectories
We start out by a recapitulation of the basic notions of dynamics.
Our aim is narrow; keep the exposition focused on prerequsites to the
applications to be developed in this text. I assume that you
are familiar with the dynamics on the level of introductory texts
such as Strogatz, and concentrate here on developing
intuition about what a dynamical system can do.
It will be a coarse brush sketch -
the full description of all possible behaviors of dynamical systems is
anyway beyond human ken.
Reading:
Chapter 2:
Exercises
Chapter 3:
Exercises
problem set 2
solutions to problem sets 1 and 2
Lecture 3
9:35-10:55 Tue Jan 18
Local stability
We continue the discussion of local properties of flows and
maps: Henon map,
linear stability, types of
eigenvalues for linear maps, stable/unstable manifolds.
Reading:
Chapter 4:
Exercises
problem set 3
pendulum.c code
solutions to problem 4.1
Lecture 4
9:35-10:55 Thu Jan 20
Lecture 5
9:35-10:55 Tue Jan 25
Billiards
Billiards, Bunimovich-Sinai formula for linear stability in billiards.
Reading:
Chapter 5, sects. 5.2, 5.3
Exercises
Lecture 6
9:35-10:55 Thu Jan 27
Transporting densities
So far we learned how to track an individual
trajectory, and its small neighborhood.
While the trajectory of an individual representative point may be
highly convoluted, the density of these points might evolve in
a manner that is relatively smooth.
The evolution of the density of
representative points is for this reason (and other that will
emerge in due course) of great interest.
Reading:
Chapter 7:
all, except Sect 7.4.1 - Liouville opertor.
Optional reading:
Appendix K:
Infinite dimensional operators (for students with advanced exposure to quantum mechanics, and mathematically inclined, mostly)
Exercises
problem set 4
solutions to problem set 4
Lecture 7
9:35-10:55 Tue Feb 1
Dynamical averaging
In chaotic dynamics detailed prediction is impossible, as any
finitely specified initial condition, no matter how precise, will fill
out the entire accessible phase space (similarly finitely grained) in finite
time. Hence for chaotic dynamics one does not attempt to follow individual
trajectories to asymptotic times; what is possible (and sensible) is description
of the geometry of the set of possible outcomes, and evaluation of the
asymptotic time averages. Examples of such averages are transport coefficients
for chaotic dynamical flows, such as the escape rate, mean drift and the
diffusion rate; power spectra; and a host of mathematical constructs such
as the generalized dimensions, Lyapunov exponents and the Kolmogorov entropy.
We shall now set up the formalism for evaluating such averages within the
framework of the periodic orbit theory. The key idea is to replace the
expectation values of observables by the expectation values of generating
functionals. This associates an evolution operator with a given observable,
and leads to formulas for its dynamical averages.
Reading:
Chapter 8:
Exercises
problem set 5
Lecture 8
9:35-10:55 Thu Jan 27 2005 in Howey S104
Newtonian mechanics
We are going to spend some time in looking at the local behavior of
flows that are invariant with respect to the symplectic structure,
that is, flows of Hamiltonian systems. The ability to express
mechanical systems in terms of Hamilton's equations provides us with
an amazing framework to study general properties and symmetries of
this type of flows. We will study the local stability conditions of
equilibria and periodic orbits. We also review the theorems of
local conjugacies that produce rectification of the flow. We talk about
the relation between the Hamiltonian formalism of
classical mechanics and the semiclassical approximation via the
Hamilton-Jacobi equation.
Reading:
Chapter 5: sect. 5.1
Appendix C: C.1 Symplectic invariance
Chapter 26: sect 26.1 - Hamilton-Jacobi theory (advanced: optional!)
Exercises
problem set 6
Lecture 9
9:35-10:55 Tue Feb 1 2005 in Howey S104
Classical helium atom
Reading:
Chapter 29:
sect 29.1 (excluding 29.1.3 and beyond -
in updated, unstable version moved to Sect 6.3 of Chapter 6)
Exercises
problem set 7
Lecture 10
9:35-10:55 Thu Feb 3 2005 in Howey S104
Dynamics, qualitative I
We start learning how to count: qualitative dynamics of simple
stretching and mixing flows is used to introduce symbolic dynamics.
Reading:
Chapter 9: Qualitative dynamics for pedestrians
Exercises
problem set 8
solutions to problem set 8
Lecture 11
9:35-10:55 Tue Feb 8 2005 in Howey S104
Dynamics, qualitative II
We continue learning how to count: qualitative dynamics of Smale
horseshoes is used to introduce pruning, finite subshifts, Markov Graphs
and transition matrices.
Reading:
Chapter 10: Qualitative dynamics for cyclists
(advanced, optional! unstable version, hence chapter numbering conflicts with the
the stable version)
Exercises
Lecture 12
9:35-10:55 Thu Feb 10 2005 in Howey S104
Counting
We finish learning how to count: the traces of powers of the
transition matrix count admissible cycles, and the largest eigenvalue of
the transition matrix yields the topological entropy. The secular determinant
of the transition matrix - the Artin-Mazur zeta function - is expressed
in terms of the loops of a Markov diagram.
By now we have covered for the first time the whole distance from diagnosing chaotic dynamcs to computing zeta functions. Historically, These topological zeta functions were the inspiration for injecting statistical mechanics into computation of dynamical averages; Ruelle's zeta functions are a weighted generalization of the counting zeta functions.
Reading:
Chapter 10: Counting
Exercises
last day to drop course
The strategy is this: Global averages such as escape rates can be extracted from the eigenvalues of evolution operators. The eigenvalues are given by the zeros of appropriate determinants. One way to evaluate determinants is to expand them in terms of traces, log det = tr log. The traces are evaluated as integrals over Dirac delta functions, and in this way the spectra of evolution operators become related to periodic orbits.
The rest of the course is making sense out of this objects and learning
how to apply them to evaluation of physically measurable properties of
chaotic dynamical systems.
Reading:
Chapter 11: Trace formulas
Exercises
Lecture 14
9:35-10:55 Thu Feb 17 2005 in Howey S104
Spectral determinants
We derive the spectral determinants, dynamical zeta functions.
Reading:
Chapter 12: Spectral determinants
Exercises
problem set 10
Lecture 15
9:35-10:55 Tue Feb 22 2005 in Howey S104
Why does it work? I
The heuristic manipulations that led to the trace formulas and
spectral determinants are potentially dangerous, as we are dealing with
infinite-dimensional vector spaces and singular integral kernels. Intuitively,
the theory should converge because long cycles are shadowed by nearby pseudo-cycles.
Actually, for clasess of not althogether too idealized smooth flows very
strong results exists.
Reading:
Chapter 13: Why does it work?
Exercises
problem set 11
Thu Feb 24 2005:
Lecture 16
9:35-10:55 Thu Feb 24 2005 in Howey S104
Why does it work? II
For clasess of not althogether too idealized smooth flows very
strong results exists. We explain the ideas behind proofs of Ruelle and
Rugh which establish that for nice real analytic expanding or hyperbolic
flows the spectral (Fredholm) determinants are entire, and that at least
in that context the edifice constructed in this course has a mathematical
basis.
midterm recess, no lecture
Tue ?? 14 2005
Lecture 17
9:35-10:55 Thu ?? 16 2005 in Howey S104
Lecture 18
9:35-10:55 Tue ?? 21 2005 in Howey S104
Cycle expansions
So far we have derived a plethora of periodic
orbit trace formulas, spectral determinants and zeta functions. Now we
learn how to expanded these as cycle expansions, series ordered by increasing
topological cycle length, and evaluate average quantites like escape rates.
These formulas are exact, and, when the winds are kind, highly convergent.
The pleasant surprise is that the terms in such expansions fall off exponentially
or even faster, so that a handful of shortest orbits suffices for rather
accurate estimates of asymptotic averages.
Reading:
Chapter 15: Cycle expansions
Exercises
problem set 12
Lecture 19
9:35-10:55 Thu ?? 23 2005 in Howey S104
Lecture 20
9:35-10:55 Tue ?? 28 2005 in Howey S104
Fixed points, and how to get them
Periodic orbits can be determined analytically in only very exceptional
cases.
In order to proceed, we shall need data about unstable periodic
orbits, so good numerical methods for their detemination are a necessity.
We shall start by determining periodic orbits of a unimodal map, and then
proceed to Newton-Raphson method for maps and Poincare maps of flows.
Reading:
Chapter 14: Fixed points, and how to find them
Extras
Exercises
Cristel Chandre's lecture notes
problem set 13
Lecture 21
9:35-10:55 Thu ?? 30 2005 in Howey S104
Lecture 22
9:35-10:55 Tue ?? 04 2005 in Howey S104
Discrete symmetries
Dynamics often comes equipped with discrete symmetries,
such as reflection and discrete rotation symmetries.
Symmetries simplify and improve the cycle expansions
in a rather beautiful way.
Reading:
Chapter 19: Discrete symmetries
Exercises
problem set 14
Lecture 23
9:35-10:55 Thu ?? 06 2005 in Howey S104
I (Nonequilibrium) statistical mechanics from deterministic chaos?
After the excursion into Lyapunov exponents, entropies, dimensions
and thermodynamical formalism, we are back to the meat of the subject;
can one derive statistical mechanics from deterministic chaos? We apply
the periodic orbit theory to evaluation of measurable properties of a very
simple model of ideal gas, periodic Lorentz gas, and derive closed-form
formulas for the diffusion constant.
Can one one go beyond equilibrium statistical mechanics and derive properties of systems far from equilibrium by the methods discussed in this course? This is currently a very lively research area, and we explain how the periodic orbit theory yields transport properties in models of dissipative driven systems, such as Guassian thermostatted Lorentz gas.
Reading:
Chapter 18: Deterministic diffusion
Exercises
Chapter 18: Intermittency
Term papers due no later than 16:00 Thu ?? 11 2005 - Predrag's office
grades deadline
Mon ?? 15 2005 in Howey S104
Predrag.Cvitanovic at physics.gatech.edu