The latest developments on both the theory and applications of bifurcations with symmetry. The text includes recent experimental work as well as new approaches to and applications of the theory to other sciences. It shows the range of dissemination of the work of Martin Golubitsky and Ian Stewart and its influence in modern mathematics at the same time as it contains work of young mathematicians in new directions. The range of topics includes mathematical biology, pattern formation, ergodic theory, normal forms, one-dimensional dynamics and symmetric dynamics.

Most physical systems lose or gain stability through bifurcation behavior. This book explains a series of experimentally found bifurcation phenomena by means of the methods of static bifurcation theory.

Understanding the spontaneous formation and dynamics of spatiotemporal patterns in dissipative nonequilibrium systems is one of the major challenges in nonlinear science. This collection of expository papers and advanced research articles, written by leading experts, provides an overview of the state of the art. The topics include new approaches to the mathematical characterization of spatiotemporal complexity, with special emphasis on the role of symmetry, as well as analysis and experiments of patterns in a remarkable variety of applied fields such as magnetoconvection, liquid crystals, granular media, Faraday waves, multiscale biological patterns, visual hallucinations, and biological pacemakers. The unitary presentations, guiding the reader from basic fundamental concepts to the most recent research results on each of the themes, make the book suitable for a wide audience.

This volume contains the proceedings of two related workshops held at The Fields Institute in February and March 1993. The workshops were an integral part of the thematic year in Dynamical Systems and Bifurcation Theory held during the 1992-1993 academic year. This volume covers the full spectrum of research involved in combining symmetry methods with dynamical systems and bifurcation theory, from the development of the mathematical theory in order to understand the underlying mechanisms to the application of this new mathematical theory, to partial differential equation models of realistic ph.

The framework of ‘symmetry’ provides an important route between the abstract theory and experimental observations. The book applies symmetry methods to dynamical systems, focusing on bifurcation and chaos theory. Its exposition is organized around a wide variety of relevant applications. From the reviews: "[The] rich collection of examples makes the book...extremely useful for motivation and for spreading the ideas to a large Community."--MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS

In recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in network-based modeling in many branches of science. This book synthesizes some of the common features of many such models, providing a general framework analogous to the modern theory of nonlinear dynamical systems. How networks lead to behavior not typical in a general dynamical system and how the architecture and symmetry of the network influence this behavior are the book’s main themes. Dynamics and Bifurcation in Networks: Theory and Applications of Coupled Differential Equations is the first book to describe the formalism for network dynamics developed over the past 20 years. In it, the authors introduce a definition of a network and the associated class of “admissible” ordinary differential equations, in terms of a directed graph whose nodes represent component dynamical systems and whose arrows represent couplings between these systems. They also develop connections between network architecture and the typical dynamics and bifurcations of these equations and discuss applications of this formalism to various areas of science, including gene regulatory networks, animal locomotion, decision-making, homeostasis, binocular rivalry, and visual illusions. This book will be of interest to scientific researchers in any area that uses network models, which includes many parts of biology, physics, chemistry, computer science, electrical and electronic engineering, psychology, and sociology.

This book contributes to an understanding of how bifurcation theory adapts to the analysis of economic geography. It is easily accessible not only to mathematicians and economists, but also to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in nonlinear mathematics. The self-organization of hexagonal agglomeration patterns of industrial regions was first predicted by the central place theory in economic geography based on investigations of southern Germany. The emergence of hexagonal agglomeration in economic geography models was envisaged by Krugman. In this book, after a brief introduction of central place theory and new economic geography, the missing link between them is discovered by elucidating the mechanism of the evolution of bifurcating hexagonal patterns. Pattern formation by such bifurcation is a well-studied topic in nonlinear mathematics, and group-theoretic bifurcation analysis is a well-developed theoretical tool. A finite hexagonal lattice is used to express uniformly distributed places, and the symmetry of this lattice is expressed by a finite group. Several mathematical methodologies indispensable for tackling the present problem are gathered in a self-contained manner. The existence of hexagonal distributions is verified by group-theoretic bifurcation analysis, first by applying the so-called equivariant branching lemma and next by solving the bifurcation equation. This book offers a complete guide for the application of group-theoretic bifurcation analysis to economic agglomeration on the hexagonal lattice.