Bøker av Julien Clinton Sprott

This book was mostly written by a machine that was programmed to search a system of equations for chaotic solutions, simplify the equations to the extent possible, analyze the behavior, produce figures, and write the accompanying text. The equations are coupled autonomous ordinary differential equations with three variables and at least one nonlinearity. Fifty simple systems are included. Some are old and familiar; others are relatively new and unknown. They are chosen to illustrate by simple example most of dynamical behaviors that can occur in low-dimensional chaotic systems.There is no substitute for the thrill and insight of seeing the solution of a simple equation unfold as the trajectory wanders in real time across your computer screen using a program of your own making. A goal of this book is to inspire and delight as well as to teach. It provides a wealth of examples ripe for further study and extension, and it offers a glimpse of a future when artificial intelligence supplants many of the mundane tasks that accompany dynamical systems research and becomes a true and tireless collaborator.

A recent development is the discovery that simple systems of equations can have chaotic solutions in which small changes in initial conditions have a large effect on the outcome, rendering the corresponding experiments effectively irreproducible and unpredictable. An earlier book in this sequence, Elegant Chaos: Algebraically Simple Chaotic Flows provided several hundred examples of such systems, nearly all of which are purely mathematical without any obvious connection with actual physical processes and with very limited discussion and analysis.In this book, we focus on a much smaller subset of such models, chosen because they simulate some common or important physical phenomenon, usually involving the motion of a limited number of point-like particles, and we discuss these models in much greater detail. As with the earlier book, the chosen models are the mathematically simplest formulations that exhibit the phenomena of interest, and thus they are what we consider 'elegant.'Elegant models, stripped of unnecessary detail while maximizing clarity, beauty, and simplicity, occupy common ground bordering both real-world modeling and aesthetic mathematical analyses. A computational search led one of us (JCS) to the same set of differential equations previously used by the other (WGH) to connect the classical dynamics of Newton and Hamilton to macroscopic thermodynamics. This joint book displays and explores dozens of such relatively simple models meeting the criteria of elegance, taste, and beauty in structure, style, and consequence.This book should be of interest to students and researchers who enjoy simulating and studying complex particle motions with unusual dynamical behaviors. The book assumes only an elementary knowledge of calculus. The systems are initial-value iterated maps and ordinary differential equations but they must be solved numerically. Thus for readers a formal differential equations course is not at all necessary, of little value and limited use.