Describes the chaos apparent in simple mechanical systems with the goal of elucidating the connections between classical and quantum mechanics. It develops the relevant ideas of the last two decades via geometric intuition rather than algebraic manipulation. The historical and cultural background against which these scientific developments have occurred is depicted, and realistic examples are discussed in detail. This book enables entry-level graduate students to tackle fresh problems in this rich field.

This book treats stochastic motion in nonlinear oscillator systems. It describes a rapidly growing field of nonlinear mechanics with applications to a number of areas in science and engineering, including astronomy, plasma physics, statistical mechanics and hydrodynamics. The main em phasis is on intrinsic stochasticity in Hamiltonian systems, where the stochastic motion is generated by the dynamics itself and not by external noise. However, the effects of noise in modifying the intrinsic motion are also considered. A thorough introduction to chaotic motion in dissipative systems is given in the final chapter. Although the roots of the field are old, dating back to the last century when Poincare and others attempted to formulate a theory for nonlinear perturbations of planetary orbits, it was new mathematical results obtained in the 1960's, together with computational results obtained using high speed computers, that facilitated our new treatment of the subject. Since the new methods partly originated in mathematical advances, there have been two or three mathematical monographs exposing these developments. However, these monographs employ methods and language that are not readily accessible to scientists and engineers, and also do not give explicit tech niques for making practical calculations. In our treatment of the material, we emphasize physical insight rather than mathematical rigor. We present practical methods for describing the motion, for determining the transition from regular to stochastic behavior, and for characterizing the stochasticity. We rely heavily on numerical computations to illustrate the methods and to validate them.

In the past 10 to 15 years, the quantum leap in understanding of nonlinear dynamics has radically changed the frame of reference of physicists contemplating such systems. This book treats classical and quantum mechanics using an approach as introduced by nonlinear Hamiltonian dynamics and path integral methods. It is written for graduate students who want to become familiar with the more advancedcomputational strategies in classical and quantum dynamics. Therefore, worked examples comprise a large part of the text. While the first half of the book lays the groundwork for a standard course, the second half, with its detailed treatment of the time-dependent oscillator, classical and quantum Chern-Simons mechanics, the Maslov anomaly and the Berry phase, willacquaint the reader with modern topological methods that have not as yet found their way into the textbook literature.

Most topics dealt with here deal with complex analysis of both one and several complex variables. Several contributions come from elasticity theory. Areas covered include the theory of p-adic analysis, mappings of bounded mean oscillations, quasiconformal mappings of Klein surfaces, complex dynamics of inverse functions of rational or transcendental entire functions, the nonlinear Riemann-Hilbert problem for analytic functions with nonsmooth target manifolds, the Carleman-Bers-Vekua system, the logarithmic derivative of meromorphic functions, G-lines, computing the number of points in an arbitrary finite semi-algebraic subset, linear differential operators, explicit solution of first and second order systems in bounded domains degenerating at the boundary, the Cauchy-Pompeiu representation in L2 space, strongly singular operators of Calderon-Zygmund type, quadrature solutions to initial and boundary-value problems, the Dirichlet problem, operator theory, tomography, elastic displacements and stresses, quantum chaos, and periodic wavelets.

The Advances in Chemical Physics series provides the chemical physics and physical chemistry fields with a forum for critical, authoritative evaluations of advances in every area of the discipline. Filled with cutting-edge research reported in a cohesive manner not found elsewhere in the literature, each volume of the Advances in Chemical Physics series serves as the perfect supplement to any advanced graduate class devoted to the study of chemical physics.