Effects of symmetry-breaking perturbations on the onset of the ``Smale- horseshoe'' chaos (Q1119037)

We shall consider in detail, by means of Melnikov method, the appearance of transverse homoclinic points in 1-dimensional problems whose potential term is given by an even function perturbed by some parity-breaking term. After having described the two possible and essentially different situations one can find, we shall introduce two methods in order to carefully analyze in each case the effects of the symmetry perturbing term on the appearance of homoclinic points (and therefore on the onset of the typical ``smale horseshoe'' chaotic motion). As examples for the various cases, we shall consider a perturbed Duffing equation the equation for the Josephson junction, and finally an equation for which we can provide the explicit solution, and which becomes in this way a good test for the results.