dynamics of conservative bykov cycles tangencies generalized cocoon bifurcations and elliptic solutions abstract this paper presents a mechanism for the coexistence of hyperbolic and non hyperbolic dynamics arising in a neighbourhood of a conservative bykov cycle where trajectories turn in opposite directions near the two saddle foci we show that within the class of divergence free vector fields that preserve the cycle tangencies of the invariant manifolds of two hyperbolic saddle foci densely occur the global dynamics is persistently dominated by heteroclinic tangencies and by the existence of infinitely many elliptic points coexisting with non uniformly hyperbolic suspended horseshoes a generalized version of the cocoon bifurcations for conservative systems is obtained

stochastic shortest path problems with associative accumulative criteria we consider a stochastic shortest path problem with associative criteria in which for each node of a graph we choose a probability distribution over the set of successor nodes so as to reach a given target node optimally we formulate such a problem as an associative markov decision processes we show that an optimal value function is a unique solution to an optimality equation and find an optimal stationary policy also we give a value iteration method and a policy improvement method

t points a codimension two heteroclinic bifurcation the local bifurcation structure of a heteroclinic bifurcation which has been observed in the lorenz equations is analyzed the existence of a particular heteroclinic loop at one point in a two dimensional parameter space a t point implies the existence of a line of heteroclinic loops and a logarithmic spiral of homoclinic orbits as well as countably many other topologically more complicatedt points in a small neighborhood in parameter space

product high order ambiguity function for multicomponent polynomial phase signal modeling parameter estimation and performance analysis issues are studied for multicomponent polynomial phase signals ppss embedded in white gaussian noise identifiability issues arising with existing approaches are described first when dealing with multicomponent pps having the same highest order phase coefficients this situation is encountered in applications such as synthetic aperture radar imaging or propagation of polynomial phase signals through channels affected by multipath and is thus worthy of a careful analysis a new approach is proposed based on a transformation called product high order ambiguity function phaf the use of the phaf offers a number of advantages with respect to the high order ambiguity function haf more specifically it removes the identifiability problem and improves noise rejection capabilities performance analysis is carried out using the perturbation method and verified by simulation results

abundance of strange attractors in 1976 he h non performed a numerical study of the family of diffeomorphisms of the plane ha b x y 1 ax2 y bx and detected for parameter values a l 4 b 0 3 what seemed to be a non trivial attractor with a highly intricate geometric structure this family has since then been the subject of intense research both numerical and theoretical but its dynamics is still far from being completely understood in particular one could not exclude the possibility that the attractor observed by h6non were just a periodic orbit with a very high period recently in a remarkable paper bc2 benedicks and carleson were able to show that this is not the case at least for a positive lebesgue measure set of parameter values near a 2 b o more precisely they showed that if b 0 is small enough then for a positive measure set of a values near a 2 the corresponding diffeomorphism ha b exhibits a strange attractor their argument is a very creative extension of the techniques they had previously developed in bull for the study of the quadratic family on the real line and no doubt it will be important for the understanding of several other situations of complicated nonhyperbolic dynamics when acquainted in 1985 with the work by benedicks and carleson then in progress palls suggested that one should in this context think of the h6non family as a particular although important model for the creation of a horseshoe and that the emphasis should be put on the occurrence of unfoldings of homoclinic tangencies he proposed that the correct setting for benedicks carleson s results is within this more general framework of homoclinic bifurcations and stated the following

bifurcation phenomena near homoclinic systems a two parameter analysis the bifurcations of periodic orbits in a class of autonomous three variable nonlinear differential equation systems possessing a homoclinic orbit associated with a saddle focus with eigenvalues i where 1 sil nikov s condition are studied in a two parameter space the perturbed homoclinic systems undergo a countable set of tangent bifurcations followed by period doubling bifurcations leading to periodic orbits which may be attractors if 1 2 the accumulation rate of the critical parameter values at the homoclinic system is exp 2 a global mechanism for the onset of homoclinicity in strongly contractive flows is analyzed cusp bifurcations with bistability and hysteresis phenomena exist locally near the onset of homoclinicity a countable set of these cusp bifurcations with scaling properties related to the eigenvalues i of the stationary state are shown to occur in infinitely contractive flows in the two parameter space the periodic orbit attractor domain exhibits a spiral structure globally around the set of homoclinic systems in which all the different periodic orbits are continuously connected

shil nikov configurations in any generic unfolding of the nilpotent singularity of codimension three on r3 abstract we are interested in the dynamics arising in generic unfoldings of the nilpotent singularity of codimension three since shil nikov type homoclinic orbits make up the simplest scenario where very complicated dynamics for three dimensional vector fields can be shown the aim of this paper is to prove analytically their existence in any of such unfoldings

dense heteroclinic tangencies near a bykov cycle abstract this article presents a mechanism for the coexistence of hyperbolic and non hyperbolic dynamics arising in a neighbourhood of a bykov cycle where trajectories turn in opposite directions near the two nodes we say that the nodes have different chirality we show that in the set of vector fields defined on a three dimensional manifold there is a class where tangencies of the invariant manifolds of two hyperbolic saddle foci occur densely the class is defined by the presence of the bykov cycle and by a condition on the parameters that determine the linear part of the vector field at the equilibria this has important consequences the global dynamics is persistently dominated by heteroclinic tangencies and by newhouse phenomena coexisting with hyperbolic dynamics arising from transversality the coexistence gives rise to linked suspensions of cantor sets with hyperbolic and non hyperbolic dynamics in contrast with the case where the nodes have the same chirality we illustrate our theory with an explicit example where tangencies arise in the unfolding of a symmetric vector field on the three dimensional sphere

accumulations of t points in a model for solitary pulses in an excitable reaction diffusion medium we consider a family of differential equations that describes traveling waves in a reaction diffusion equation modeling oxidation of carbon oxide on a platinum surface near the onset of spatio temporal chaos the organizing bifurcation for the bifurcation structure with small carbon oxide pressures turns out to be a codimension 3 bifurcation involving a homoclinic orbit to an equilibrium undergoing a transcritical bifurcation we show how infinitely many t point bifurcations of multi loop heteroclinic cycles occur in the unfolding

heteroclinic bifurcations near hopf zero bifurcation in reversible vector fields in r 3 abstract we study the dynamics near a symmetric hopf zero also known as saddle node hopf or fold hopf bifurcation in a reversible vector field in r 3 with involutory an reversing symmetry whose fixed point subspace is one dimensional we focus on the case in which the normal form for this bifurcation displays a degenerate family of heteroclinics between two asymmetric saddle foci we study local perturbations of this degenerate family of heteroclinics within the class of reversible vector fields and establish the generic existence of hyperbolic basic sets horseshoes independent of the eigenvalues of the saddle foci as well as cascades of bifurcations of periodic heteroclinic and homoclinic orbits finally we discuss the application of our results to the michelson system describing stationary states and travelling waves of the kuramoto sivashinsky pde

global bifurcations close to symmetry abstract heteroclinic cycles involving two saddle foci where the saddle foci share both invariant manifolds occur persistently in some symmetric differential equations on the 3 dimensional sphere we analyse the dynamics around this type of cycle in the case when trajectories near the two equilibria turn in the same direction around a 1 dimensional connection the saddle foci have the same chirality when part of the symmetry is broken the 2 dimensional invariant manifolds intersect transversely creating a heteroclinic network of bykov cycles we show that the proximity of symmetry creates heteroclinic tangencies that coexist with hyperbolic dynamics there are n pulse heteroclinic tangencies trajectories that follow the original cycle n times around before they arrive at the other node each n pulse heteroclinic tangency is accumulated by a sequence of n 1 pulse ones this coexists with the suspension of horseshoes defined on an infinite set of disjoint strips where the first return map is hyperbolic we also show how as the system approaches full symmetry the suspended horseshoes are destroyed creating regions with infinitely many attracting periodic solutions

period doubling cascades of attractors a prerequisite for horseshoes this paper shows that if a horseshoe is created in a natural manner as a parameter is varied then the process of creation involves the appearance of attracting periodic orbits of all periods furthermore each of these orbits will period double repeatedly with those periods going to infinity

optimal policy for minimizing risk models in markov decision processes we consider the minimizing risk problems in discounted markov decisions processes with countable state space and bounded general rewards we characterize optimal values for finite and infinite horizon cases and give two sufficient conditions for the existence of an optimal policy in an infinite horizon case these conditions are closely connected with lemma 3 in white 1993 which is not correct as wu and lin 1999 point out we obtain a condition for the lemma to be true under which we show that there is an optimal policy under another condition we show that an optimal value is a unique solution to some optimality equation and there is an optimal policy on a transient set

global generic dynamics close to symmetry abstract our object of study is the dynamics that arises in generic perturbations of an asymptotically stable heteroclinic cycle in s 3 the cycle involves two saddle foci of different type and is structurally stable within the class of z 2 z 2 symmetric vector fields the cycle contains a two dimensional connection that persists as a transverse intersection of invariant surfaces under symmetry breaking perturbations gradually breaking the symmetry in a two parameter family we get a wide range of dynamical behaviour an attracting periodic trajectory other heteroclinic trajectories homoclinic orbits n pulses suspended horseshoes and cascades of bifurcations of periodic trajectories near an unstable homoclinic cycle of shilnikov type we also show that generically the coexistence of linked homoclinic orbits at the two saddle foci has codimension 2 and takes place arbitrarily close to the symmetric cycle

spiralling dynamics near heteroclinic networks abstract there are few explicit examples in the literature of vector fields exhibiting complex dynamics that may be proved analytically we construct explicitly a two parameter family of vector fields on the three dimensional sphere s 3 whose flow has a spiralling attractor containing the following two hyperbolic equilibria heteroclinic trajectories connecting them transversely and a non trivial hyperbolic invariant and transitive set the spiralling set unfolds a heteroclinic network between two symmetric saddle foci and contains a sequence of topological horseshoes semiconjugate to full shifts over an alphabet with more and more symbols coexisting with newhouse phenomena the vector field is the restriction to s 3 of a polynomial vector field in r 4 in this article we also identify global bifurcations that induce chaotic dynamics of different types

possible new strange attractors with spiral structure we define a class of three dimensional differential equations which might present strange attractors of a new kind this is illustrated by numerical observations on an explicit example

estimation of frequency in the presence of nonrandom interference this paper develops a method of error analysis for fourier transform based sinusoidal frequency estimation in the presence of nonrandom interferences a general error formula is derived and then specialized to the cases of additive and multiplicative interferences approximate error formulas are derived for the case of additive polynomial phase interference finally an application to error analysis in estimating the parameters of multiple polynomial phase signals is discussed in detail

bifurcations in a model of magnetoconvection abstract bifurcations from oscillatory solutions are studied in a truncated model of two dimensional boussinesq magnetoconvection the fifth order system of nonlinear differential equations is integrated numerically and in certain parameter regimes there is a bifurcation from symmetrical to asymmetrical oscillations followed by a period doubling cascade after the accumulation point there is a semiperiodic cascade leading to chaotic behaviour then the semiperiodic cascade is repeated in reverse followed by a period halving cascade and a bifurcation back to symmetry finally the branch of oscillatory solutions terminates with a symmetrical heteroclinic orbit that connects two saddle foci the interval with aperiodic solutions contains many pairs of narrow windows with asymmetrical or symmetrical periodic solutions each with its own cascade this pattern of behaviour is likely to occur when a periodic orbit approaches a symmetrical pair of saddle foci with eigenvalues that satisfy shil nikov s inequality

single and multiple pulse waves for the fitzhugh nagumo the fitzhugh nagumo equations describe the propagation of impulses along a nerve axon we study traveling wave solutions which satisfy a set of ordinary differential equations with a cubic nonlinearity f v v 1 v v a our emphasis is on solutions which tend to zero at pm infty an improved proof of a previous result that there are at least two such solutions is presented further by allowing the middle root v a of the nonlinearity to be a small parameter better estimates of the parameter range where such solutions exist are given in view of recent work of evans fenichel feroe and sil nikov our results imply that there are a great many more bounded traveling waves than was known previously in particular there is an infinite family of periodic waves all traveling with the same speed a reasonable transversality hypothesis introduced by evans fenichel and feroe implies also that there are multiple pulse waves at speeds close to that of a single pulse

optimal threshold probability in undiscounted markov decision processes with a target set we consider risk minimizing problems in undiscounted markov decisions processes with a target set we formulate the problem as an infinite horizon case with a recurrent class we show that an optimal value function is a unique solution to an optimality equation and there exists an stationary optimal policy also we give several value iteration methods and a policy improvement method

an analysis of stochastic shortest path problems we consider a stochastic version of the classical shortest path problem whereby for each node of a graph we must choose a probability distribution over the set of successor nodes so as to reach a certain destination node with minimum expected cost the costs of transition between successive nodes can be positive as well as negative we prove natural generalizations of the standard results for the deterministic shortest path problem and we extend the corresponding theory for undiscounted finite state markovian decision problems by removing the usual restriction that costs are either all nonnegative or all nonpositive

statistical analysis of the product high order ambiguity function the high order ambiguity function haf was introduced for the estimation of polynomial phase signals pps embedded in noise since the haf is a nonlinear operator it suffers from noise masking effects and from the appearance of undesired cross terms and possibly spurious harmonics in the presence of multicomponent mc signals the product haf phaf was then proposed as a way to improve the performance of the haf in the presence of noise and to solve the ambiguity problem in this correspondence we derive a statistical analysis of the phaf in the presence of additive white gaussian noise awgn valid for high signal to noise ratio snr and a finite number of data samples the analysis is carried out in detail for single component pps but the multicomponent case is also discussed error propagation phenomena implicit in the recursive structure of the phaf based estimator are explicitly taken into account the analysis is validated by simulation results for both single and multicomponent ppss

local and global behavior near homoclinic orbits we study the local behavior of systems near homoclinic orbits to stationary points of saddle focus type we explicitly describe how a periodic orbit approaches homoclinicity and with the help of numerical examples discuss how these results relate to global patterns of bifurcations

imperfect homoclinic bifurcations experimental observations of an almost symmetric electronic circuit show complicated sequences of bifurcations these results are discussed in the light of a theory of imperfect global bifurcations it is shown that much of the dynamics observed in the circuit can be understood by reference to imperfect homoclinic bifurcations without constructing an explicit mathematical model of the system

existence and stability of multiple impulse solutions of a nerve equation a piecewise linear partial differential equation which models the propagation of a nerve impulse along an axon is studied for the equation parameters used there are two solutions which represent solitary impulses traveling with fixed form one with a slower velocity c s1 than the velocity c f1 of the other we show that near these velocities there exist multiple impulse solutions and exhibit four such solutions each of which has two pulses the local stability of these solutions is analyzed the two solutions whose velocities are near c s1 demonstrate instabilities which indicate growth or decay of the separate pulses for one of the multiple impulse solutions with velocity near c s1 and for one of those with velocity near c f1 the second pulse deomonstrates an instability which indicates a change in the spacing between the two pulses the other solution with velocity near c f1 is stable

what can we learn from homoclinic orbits in chaotic dynamics state diagrams of two model systems involving three variables are constructed the parameter dependence of different forms of complex nonperiodic behavior and particularly of homoclinic orbits is analyzed it is shown that the onset of homoclinicity is reflected by deep changes in the qualitative behavior of the system

using lin s method to solve bykov s problems abstract we consider nonwandering dynamics near heteroclinic cycles between two hyperbolic equilibria the constituting heteroclinic connections are assumed to be such that one of them is transverse and isolated such heteroclinic cycles are associated with the termination of a branch of homoclinic solutions and called t points in this context we study codimension two t points and their unfoldings in r n in our consideration we distinguish between cases with real and complex leading eigenvalues of the equilibria in doing so we establish lin s method as a unified approach to re gain and extend results of bykov s seminal studies and related works to a large extent our approach reduces the study to the discussion of intersections of lines and spirals in the plane

minimizing a threshold probability in discounted markov decision processes necessary and sufficient conditions are found for the characteristic functions of a finite number of given sets to be linearly independant

minimizing risk models in markov decision processes with policies depending on target values abstract this paper studies the minimizing risk problems in markov decision processes with countable state space and reward set the objective is to find a policy which minimizes the probability risk that the total discounted rewards do not exceed a specified value target in this sort of model the decision made by the decision maker depends not only on system s states but also on his target values by introducing the decision maker s state we formulate a framework for minimizing risk models the policies discussed depend on target values and the rewards may be arbitrary real numbers for the finite horizon model the main results obtained are i the optimal value functions are distribution functions of the target ii there exists an optimal deterministic markov policy and iii a policy is optimal if and only if at each realizable state it always takes optimal action in addition we obtain a sufficient condition and a necessary condition for the existence of finite horizon optimal policy independent of targets and we give an algorithm computing finite horizon optimal policies and optimal value functions for an infinite horizon model we establish the optimality equation and we obtain the structure property of optimal policy we prove that the optimal value function is a distribution function of target and we present a new approximation formula which is the generalization of the nonnegative rewards cases an example which illustrates the mistakes of previous literature shows that the existence of optimal policy has not been proved really in this paper we give an existence condition which is a sufficient and necessary condition for the existence of an infinite horizon optimal policy independent of targets and we point out that whether there exists an optimal policy remains an open problem in the general case