Frequency spanning homoclinic families. (Q1406790)

The author studies homoclinic orbits in one-and-a-half degree of freedom Hamiltonian systems. A family of periodically forced Hamiltonian systems is called frequency spanning if the forcing frequency \(\omega(\nu)\) depends continuously on a parameter \(\nu\) and covers the whole interval \([0,\infty)\) as \(\nu\) varies in some interval. This notion is introduced in order to study periodically forced Hamiltonian systems where the forcing term is not small and where the forcing frequency is neither very slow nor very fast such that perturbation methods do not apply. A new labelling scheme for homoclinic points is introduced which both respects the order along the unstable manifold and is able to take into account isolated bifurcations. Using an appropriate rescaling, a flux function is defined which is then shown to be \(C^1\) and nonmonotone in the parameter \(\nu\). This can be used to show that, in many situations, the size of the chaotic zone depends in a nonmonotone way on the parameter. The results are illustrated using a forced saddle-center bifurcation.