This book presents an overview of the outcomes resulting from applying the dynamical systems approach to space mission design, a topic referred to as "Space Manifold Dynamics" (SMD). It is a natural follow-on to the international workshop "Novel Spaceways for Scientific and Exploration Missions," which was held in October 2007 at the Telespazio Fucino Space Centre (Italy) under the auspices of the Space OPS Academy. The benefits and drawbacks of using the Lagrangian points and the associated trajectories for present and future space missions are discussed. The related methods and algorithms are also described in detail. Each topic is presented in articles that were written as far as possible to be self consistent; the use of introductory sections and of extended explanations is included in order to address the different communities potentially interested in SMD: space science, the aerospace industry, manned and unmanned exploration, celestial mechanics, and flight dynamics.

This book considers global solutions to the restricted three-body problem from a geometric point of view. The authors seek dynamical channels in the phase space which wind around the planets and moons and naturally connect them. These low energy passageways could slash the amount of fuel spacecraft need to explore and develop our solar system. In order to effectively exploit these passageways, the book addresses the global transport. It goes beyond the traditional scope of libration point mission design, developing tools for the design of trajectories which take full advantage of natural three or more body dynamics, thereby saving precious fuel and gaining flexibility in mission planning. This is the key for the development of some NASA mission trajectories, such as low energy libration point orbit missions (e.g., the sample return Genesis Discovery Mission), low energy lunar missions and low energy tours of outer planet moon systems, such as a mission to tour and explore in detail the icy moons of Jupiter. This book can serve as a valuable resource for graduate students and advanced undergraduates in applied mathematics and aerospace engineering, as well as a manual for practitioners who work on libration point and deep space missions in industry and at government laboratories. the authors include a wealth of background material, but also bring the reader up to a portion of the research frontier.

This book provides an accessible introduction to the variational formulation of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics, with a novel emphasis on global descriptions of the dynamics, which is a significant conceptual departure from more traditional approaches based on the use of local coordinates on the configuration manifold. In particular, we introduce a general methodology for obtaining globally valid equations of motion on configuration manifolds that are Lie groups, homogeneous spaces, and embedded manifolds, thereby avoiding the difficulties associated with coordinate singularities. The material is presented in an approachable fashion by considering concrete configuration manifolds of increasing complexity, which then motivates and naturally leads to the more general formulation that follows. Understanding of the material is enhanced by numerous in-depth examples throughout the book, culminating in non-trivial applications involving multi-body systems. This book is written for a general audience of mathematicians, engineers, and physicists with a basic knowledge of mechanics. Some basic background in differential geometry is helpful, but not essential, as the relevant concepts are introduced in the book, thereby making the material accessible to a broad audience, and suitable for either self-study or as the basis for a graduate course in applied mathematics, engineering, or physics.

Within the general framework of the dynamics of ?large? groups on geometric spaces, the focus is on the types of groups that can act in complicated ways on Lorentz manifolds, and on the structure of the resulting manifolds and actions. This particular area of dynamics is an active one, and not all the results are in their final form. However, at this point, a great deal can be said about the particular Lie groups that come up in this context. It is impressive that, even assuming very weak recurrence of the action, the list of possible groups is quite restricted. For the most complicated of these groups, one can also describe reasonably well the local structure of the actions that arise.This advanced text is also appropriate to a course for mathematics graduate students who have completed their first year of study.

This book aims to present a new approach called Flow Curvature Method that applies Differential Geometry to Dynamical Systems. Hence, for a trajectory curve, an integral of any n-dimensional dynamical system as a curve in Euclidean n-space, the curvature of the trajectory — or the flow — may be analytically computed. Then, the location of the points where the curvature of the flow vanishes defines a manifold called flow curvature manifold. Such a manifold being defined from the time derivatives of the velocity vector field, contains information about the dynamics of the system, hence identifying the main features of the system such as fixed points and their stability, local bifurcations of codimension one, center manifold equation, normal forms, linear invariant manifolds (straight lines, planes, hyperplanes).In the case of singularly perturbed systems or slow-fast dynamical systems, the flow curvature manifold directly provides the slow invariant manifold analytical equation associated with such systems. Also, starting from the flow curvature manifold, it will be demonstrated how to find again the corresponding dynamical system, thus solving the inverse problem.

This unique reference, aimed at research topologists, gives an exposition of the 'pseudo-Anosov' theory of foliations of 3-manifolds. This theory generalizes Thurston's theory of surface automorphisms and reveals an intimate connection between dynamics, geometry and topology in 3 dimensions. Significant themes returned to throughout the text include the importance of geometry, especially the hyperbolic geometry of surfaces, the importance of monotonicity, especially in1-dimensional and co-dimensional dynamics, and combinatorial approximation, using finite combinatorical objects such as train-tracks, branched surfaces and hierarchies to carry more complicated continuous objects.

The purpose of this book is to provide core material in nonlinear analysis for mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and mathematical biologists. The main goal is to provide a working knowledge of manifolds, dynamical systems, tensors, and differential forms. Some applications to Hamiltonian mechanics, fluid me chanics, electromagnetism, plasma dynamics and control thcory arc given in Chapter 8, using both invariant and index notation. The current edition of the book does not deal with Riemannian geometry in much detail, and it does not treat Lie groups, principal bundles, or Morse theory. Some of this is planned for a subsequent edition. Meanwhile, the authors will make available to interested readers supplementary chapters on Lie Groups and Differential Topology and invite comments on the book's contents and development. Throughout the text supplementary topics are given, marked with the symbols ~ and {l:;J. This device enables the reader to skip various topics without disturbing the main flow of the text. Some of these provide additional background material intended for completeness, to minimize the necessity of consulting too many outside references. We treat finite and infinite-dimensional manifolds simultaneously. This is partly for efficiency of exposition. Without advanced applications, using manifolds of mappings, the study of infinite-dimensional manifolds can be hard to motivate.