Foundations of synergetics. II: Chaos and noise. (Q1921587)

[For the review of the first edition of vol. 1 (1990) see Zbl 0712.92001, and for the second edition (1994) see Zbl 0804.92001.] Synergetics is a field of research concerned with the cooperation between the parts of a system which results in production of macroscopic spatial, temporal or functional structures. The authors have outlined the field in a two-volume treatise based on a lecture course given at the University of Moscow. The aim is to give an introduction to the mathematical theory of self-organization. Synergetics deals with both deterministic and stochastic processes. This second edition of the second volume is concerned with the latter. Essentially it is a didactic review which links the nonlinear nondeterministic ``new math'' of the last 30 years to classical studies in dynamics and noise theory. There is a shift in emphasis in the second edition which is indicated by the change in subtitle from ``Complex Patterns'' to ``Chaos and Noise.'' Nevertheless much of the book is identical to the first edition (1991; Zbl 0729.58001). The authors still present such topics as strange attractors, fractals, bifurcations, the Fokker-Planck equation, Brownian motion, and population growth and extinction. However, catastrophe theory no longer appears as such. Only those chapters and sections which have been significantly revised in the second edition are discussed below. Chapter 4: Fractals. A discussion of Julia sets has been added. These are basin boundaries for rational maps of a complex plane into itself. Chapter 6: Routes to Temporal Chaos. Several methods are described that are used to control chaotic dynamics. Chapter 7: Spatiotemporal Chaos. In the preface the authors state that a different version of chapter 7 reflects significant progress in understanding of spatiotemporal chaos. The revised first section on embedding dimensions utilizes exactly the same equations and illustrations as before. However, a new title, ``Analysis of Time Series'', together with new descriptive material indicates a greater breadth of interpretation. The second section is a verbal and pictorial discussion of turbulence. Exploration of the Ginzburg-Landau equation, in which local elements having chaotic dynamics are diffusion coupled, is deferred to a new, greatly expanded, fourth section. The treatment of coupled chaotic maps in the third section has been substantially abbreviated. The fifth section is a nonmathematical discussion of the statistics of defects. The chapter concludes with a brief review of work on transient turbulence. Chapter 9: Active Systems with Noise. The treatment of Brownian motion is generalized for dynamical systems with many degrees of freedom. Mikhailov's stochastic differential equation, which describes concentration fluctuations caused by the diffusion of particles, is derived and related to forms of the Fokker-Planck equation. The section on optimal fluctuations has been expanded to place greater emphasis on calculating transition probabilities and, in particular, probabilities of transition between attractors of a system. Chapter 10: Birth-Death Systems. The original treatment of population explosions is restated in more general form and is placed in the context of birth-death systems. Spatial and temporal variations in birth and death rates are taken into account. Several nonlinear models of population growth are presented. The intermittency of population explosions is explained by the fact that the influence of noise is nonlinear. Chapter 12: Nonequilibrium Phase Transitions. In the first edition, this chapter was entitled ``Catastrophes''. A new introduction and some new discussion corresponding to the new title is provided, but the mathematical substance of the first three sections is unchanged. Notation in the fourth section, which deals with the Verhulst logistic equation, is revised and now explicitly reflects birth and death rate constants. The fifth section treats competition and coexistence of species in a fluctuating environment more rigorously than the corresponding section of the first edition.