Institute for Nonlinear Science - Böcker

This book provides a summary of the research conducted at UCLA, Stanford University, and UCSD over the last ?ve years in the area of nonlinear dyn- ics and chaos as applied to digital communications. At ?rst blush, the term “chaotic communications” seems like an oxymoron; how could something as precise and deterministic as digital communications be chaotic? But as this book will demonstrate, the application of chaos and nonlinear dynamicstocommunicationsprovidesmanypromisingnewdirectionsinareas of coding, nonlinear optical communications, and ultra-wideband commu- cations. The eleven chapters of the book summarize many of the promising new approaches that have been developed, and point the way to new research directions in this ?eld. Digital communications techniques have been continuously developed and re?ned for the past ?fty years to the point where today they form the heart of a multi-hundred billion dollar per year industry employing hundreds of thousands of people on a worldwide basis. There is a continuing need for transmission and reception of digital signals at higher and higher data rates. There are a variety of physical limits that place an upper limit on these data rates, and so the question naturally arises: are there alternative communi- tion techniques that can overcome some of these limitations? Most digital communications today is carried out using electronic devices that are essentially “linear,” and linear system theory has been used to c- tinually re?ne their performance. In many cases, inherently nonlinear devices are linearized in order to achieve a certain level of linear system performance.

This book is the result of a growing realization that fluctuations play an active, even creative, role in nonequilibrium processes such as self-organization, pattern formation, and information processing and energy transduction in biological systems. In contrast to the general notion that fluctuations represent an undesirable "noise" in such systems - unimportant at best and undesirable or disruptive at worst - this book points toward a view in which fluctuations are fundamental aspects of the systems under study and frequently serve a constructive or stabilizing role in the dynamics. It includes contributions by prominent researchers in a great variety of disciplines, from theoretical cosmologists to experimental biologists, on such topics as stochastic resonance, noise in sensory nervous systems, mechanisms of intracellular transport, and kinetic theory of nonequilibrium systems.

This text describes how fractal phenomena, both deterministic and random, change over time, using the fractional calculus. The intent is to identify those characteristics of complex physical phenomena that require fractional derivatives or fractional integrals to describe how the process changes over time. The discussion emphasizes the properties of physical phenomena whose evolution is best described using the fractional calculus, such as systems with long-range spatial interactions or long-time memory. In many cases, classic analytic function theory cannot serve for modeling complex phenomena; "Fractal Operators" shows how classes of less familiar functions, such as fractals, can serve as useful models in such cases. Because fractal functions, such as the Weierstrass function (long known not to have a derivative), do in fact have fractional derivatives, they can be cast as solutions to fractional differential equations. The traditional techniques for solving differential equations, including Fourier and Laplace transforms as well as Green's functions, can be generalized to fractional derivatives.Fractal Operators addresses a general strategy for understanding wave propagation through random media, the nonlinear response of complex materials, and the fluctuations of various forms of transport in heterogeneous materials. This strategy builds on traditional approaches and explains why the historical techniques fail as phenomena become more and more complicated.

This book develops a clear and systematic treatment of time series of data, regular and chaotic, that one finds in observations of nonlinear systems. The reader is led from measurements of one or more variables through the steps of building models of the source as a dynamical system, classifying the source by its dynamical characteristics, and finally predicting and controlling the dynamical system. The text examines methods for separating the signal of physical interest from contamination by unwanted noise, and for investigating the phase space of the chaotic signal and its properties. The emphasis throughout is on the use of the modern mathematical tools for investigating chaotic behavior to uncover properties of physical systems. The methods require knowledge of dynamical systems at the advanced undergraduate level and some knowledge of Fourier transforms and other signal processing methods.The toolkit developed in the book will provide the reader with efficient and effective methods for analyzing signals from nonlinear sources; these methods are applicable to problems of control, communication, and prediction in a wide variety of systems encountered in physics, chemistry, biology, and geophysics.

Based on courses given at the universities of Texas in Austin, and California in San Diego, this book deals with the basic mechanisms that determine the dynamic evolution of classical and quantum systems. It presents, in as simple a manner as possible, the basic mechanisms that determine the dynamical evolution of both classical and quantum systems in sufficient generality to include quantum phenomena. The book begins with a discussion of Noether's theorem, integrability, KAM theory, and a definition of chaotic behavior; it continues with a detailed discussion of area-preserving maps, integrable quantum systems, spectral properties, path integrals, and periodically driven systems; and it concludes by showing how to apply the ideas to stochastic systems. The presentation is complete and self-contained; appendices provide much of the needed mathematical background, and there are extensive references to the current literature. Problems at the ends of chapters help students clarify their understanding. In this new edition, the presentation will be brought up to date throughout, and a new chapter on open quantum systems will be added.

Intended for graduate students and researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, and applied mathematics, this book provides an up-to-date introduction to current research in fluctuations in spatially extended systems. It offers a practical introduction to the theory of stochastic partial differential equations and gives an overview of the effects of external noise on dynamical systems with spatial degrees of freedom. The text begins with a general introduction to noise-induced phenomena in dynamical systems followed by an extensive discussion of analytical and numerical tools needed to get information from stochastic partial differential equations. It then turns to particular problems described by stochastic partial differential equations, covering a wide part of the rich phenomenology of spatially extended systems, such as nonequilibrium phase transitions, domain growth, pattern formation, and front propagation. The only prerequisite is a minimal background knowledge of the Langevin and Fokker-Planck equations.

This book introduces readers to a new and exciting cross-disciplinary field of digital communications with chaos. This field was born around 15 years ago, when it was first demonstrated that nonlinear systems which produce complex non-periodic noise-like chaotic signals, can be synchronized and modulated to carry useful information. Thus, chaotic signals can be used instead of pseudo-random digital sequences for spread-spectrum and private communication applications. This deceptively simple idea spun hundreds of research papers, and many novel communication schemes based on chaotic signals have been proposed. However, only very recently researchers have begun to make a transition from academic studies toward practical implementation issues, and many "promising" schemes had to be discarded or re-formulated. This book describes the state of the art (both theoretical and experimental) of this novel field. The book is written by leading experts in the fields of Nonlinear Dynamics and Electrical Engineering who participated in US Army sponsored Multi-University Research Initiative on Digital Communication using Nonlinear Dynamics.It will be useful for active researchers and advanced graduate students interested in this exciting new field.

This text describes how fractal phenomena, both deterministic and random, change over time, using the fractional calculus. The intent is to identify those characteristics of complex physical phenomena that require fractional derivatives or fractional integrals to describe how the process changes over time. The discussion emphasizes the properties of physical phenomena whose evolution is best described using the fractional calculus, such as systems with long-range spatial interactions or long-time memory.In many cases, classic analytic function theory cannot serve for modeling complex phenomena; "Fractal Operators" shows how classes of less familiar functions, such as fractals, can serve as useful models in such cases. Because fractal functions, such as the Weierstrass function (long known not to have a derivative), do in fact have fractional derivatives, they can be cast as solutions to fractional differential equations. The traditional techniques for solving differential equations, including Fourier and Laplace transforms as well as Green's functions, can be generalized to fractional derivatives.Fractal Operators addresses a general strategy for understanding wave propagation through random media, the nonlinear response of complex materials, and the fluctuations of various forms of transport in heterogeneous materials.This strategy builds on traditional approaches and explains why the historical techniques fail as phenomena become more and more complicated.

Intended for graduate students and researchers in physics, chemistry, biology, and applied mathematics, this book provides an up-to-date introduction to current research in fluctuations in spatially extended systems. It offers a practical introduction to the theory of stochastic partial differential equations and gives an overview of the effects of external noise on dynamical systems with spatial degrees of freedom. The text begins with a general introduction to noise-induced phenomena in dynamical systems followed by an extensive discussion of analytical and numerical tools needed to get information from stochastic partial differential equations. It then turns to particular problems described by stochastic partial differential equations, covering a wide part of the rich phenomenology of spatially extended systems, such as nonequilibrium phase transitions, domain growth, pattern formation, and front propagation. The only prerequisite is a minimal background knowledge of the Langevin and Fokker-Planck equations.

In recent years there has been a growth in interest in studying the heart from the perspective of the physical sciences: mechanics, fluid flow, electromechanics. This volume is the result of a workshop held in July 1989 at the Institute for Nonlinear Sciences at the University of California at San Diego that brought together scientists and clinicians with graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who shared an interest in the heart. The chapters were prepared by the invited speakers as didactic reviews of their subjects but also include the structure, mechanical properties, and function of the heart and the myocardium, electrical activity of the heart and myocardium, and mathematical models of heart function.