NJIT Applied Mathematics Colloquium
Friday, March 30, 2012, 11:30am
Cullimore Lecture Hall III
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Hamiltonian instability and its applications to astrodynamics
Marian Gidea
Institute for Advanced Study
The study of instability of Hamiltonian systems was considered by
Poincare as `the fundamental problem of dynamics'. The origins of this
problem reside with the question of whether our Solar system is stable
or not. We present an ensemble of geometrical and topological methods
that can be used to analyze various mechanisms that produce unstable
trajectories. These methods are robust, so they can be implemented in
rigorous numerical experiments. We present some applications of these
techniques to the design of energy efficient space missions. |