TOPICS IN NONLINEAR DYNAMICS: APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS, BIOLOGY AND ECONOMIC SYSTEMS by Erik Mosekilde (The Technical University of Denmark)
Insight gained from work in nonlinear dynamics (bifurcations
and chaos) over the last two decades has produced a healthy shift in research direction in many areas of science. Problems that were previously considered as unsolvable or even ill-posed are now successfully addressed in fields as different as physics engineering, biology and even economics.
Emphasizing the unity of the underlying concepts, the subjects considered in this book range from die tossing, forced nonlinear mechanical oscillators, and the dynamics of a thrust vectored aircraft over optical ring cavities to semiconductor instabilities and pattern formation in chemical reaction-diffusion systems. Biological examples include pulsatile secretion of insulin, spontaneous oscillations and chaos in kidney pressure and flow regulation, and ecological food-web models. The possibility of chaotic dynamics in macro- and microeconomic systems is also discussed.
Content: Combining experimental results with model formulation and detailed bifurcation analysis, the book provides a series of well-documented examples of nonlinear dynamic phenomena in different areas of science and technology.
Readership: The reader is supposed to have a basic knowledge in nonlinear dynamics and to be familiar, for instance, with concepts such as Hopf and saddle-node bifurcations, limit cycles, Poincare sections, and period-doubling cascades.
380 pp. Published 1996, 1998.
981-02-2764-7 World Scientific, Singapore
Paperback edition 2003