An Introduction To Chaotic Dynamical Systems

Professor Robert L. Devaney received his A.B. from Holy Cross College and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1973. He taught at Northwestern University, Tufts University, and the University of Maryland before coming to Boston University in 1980. He served there as chairman of the Department of Mathematics from 1983 to 1986. His main area of research is dynamical systems, including Hamiltonian systems, complex analytic dynamics, and computer experiments in dynamics. He is the author of An Introduction to Chaotic Dynamical Systems, and Chaos, Fractals, and Dynamics: Computer Experiments in Modern Mathematics, which aims to explain the beauty of chaotic dynamics to high school students and teachers.

Part One: One-Dimensional Dynamics * Examples of Dynamical Systems * Preliminaries from Calculus * Elementary Definitions * Hyperbolicity * An example: the quadratic family * An Example: the Quadratic Family * Symbolic Dynamics * Topological Conjugacy * Chaos * Structural Stability * Sarlovskiis Theorem * The Schwarzian Derivative * Bifurcation Theory * Another View of Period Three * Maps of the Circle * Morse-Smale Diffeomorphisms * Homoclinic Points and Bifurcations * The Period-Doubling Route to Chaos * The Kneeding Theory * Geneaology of Periodic Units Part Two: Higher Dimensional Dynamics * Preliminaries from Linear Algebra and Advanced Calculus * The Dynamics of Linear Maps: Two and Three Dimensions * The Horseshoe Map * Hyperbolic Toral Automorphisms * Hyperbolicm Toral Automorphisms * Attractors * The Stable and Unstable Manifold Theorem * Global Results and Hyperbolic Sets * The Hopf Bifurcation * The Hnon Map Part Three: Complex Analytic Dynamics * Preliminaries from Complex Analysis * Quadratic Maps Revisited * Normal Families and Exceptional Points * Periodic Points * The Julia Set * The Geometry of Julia Sets * Neutral Periodic Points * The Mandelbrot Set * An Example: the Exponential Function