Lyapunov characteristics of oscillation, rotation, and wandering of solutions of differential systems (Q1991902)

This paper deals with general properties of solutions of linear homogeneous systems of differential equations \[ \dot{x} = A(t)x,\, x\in\mathbb R^n,\, t\in\mathbb R^+\equiv [0, \infty). \] The author's own words below are more appropriate as a brief review of the paper. A number of Lyapunov exponents are defined for solutions of linear systems. These exponents are responsible for such properties of the solutions as oscillation, rotation, and wandering and are defined in terms of certain functionals applied to the solutions on finite intervals as a result of two operations: upper or lower averaging in time and minimization over all bases in the phase space. Important special cases of systems, such as lower order systems, autonomous systems and systems of arbitrary order, are considered and a set of relations (equalities and inequalities) between the said exponents are obtained. It is shown that this set is complete in the sense that it cannot be extended or strengthened by any other meaningful relation.