The evolution of invariant manifolds in Hamiltonian-Hopf bifurcations (Q1874344)

In a Hamiltonian system with two degrees of freedom the behaviour of the invariant manifolds of an equilibrium are studied which changes its type from hyperbolic to elliptic. More precisely, for \(\nu<0\) the linearization possesses a quadruple of complex eigenvalues, while for \(\nu>0\) there are two pairs of purely imaginary eigenvalues. The main result states that for \(\nu<0\) small the two-dimensional stable and unstable manifolds either coincide or have a topologically transverse intersection provided that a certain term in the Sokolskii normal form has a positive sign. The authors first show that for the truncated normal form the stable and unstable manifold agree and use some scaling arguments to track the invariant manifolds of the full system up to \(\nu=0\) where hyperbolicity is lost. They show that their theorem can be applied to the restricted three-body problem as well as to some fourth-order equation.