Specifically, the topic of nonlinear dynamics has generated a great deal of interest during the past several years. A number of opportunities appear to be presented by appropriately mining the basic research developments that have been the subject of recent intense activity. This field promises impact in diverse areas such as fluid turbulence, plasma behavior, optical bistability, molecular dynamics, semiconducting and superconducting devices, magnetic properties, particle aggregation, crystal growth, and even possibly quantum mechanics. Chaos has become a popular subject for examination in a number of research areas. A number of important principles have been discovered over the past 10 years in this active field.
Principles leading to a prediction of bifurcation appear to be developing.
Inherently, if one can ascribe some degree of order to what was previously thought to be noise, the extraction of signals from noisy background could be enhanced. Chaotic behavior should be useful in predicting power spectral densities. Fractals represent a relatively new method of representing signals, images, and information that appears to have a regularity in an otherwise irregular pattern. Although of considerable interest scientifically and importance technologically, signal processing is in fact only one of the areas in which recent developments in nonlinear dynamics offer promise for significant improvements in naval technologies. It is important to note that this report does not claim to be comprehensive in this regard.