Arnold diffusion in a priori chaotic symplectic maps (Q2358806)

The authors contribute to the exploration of the genericity of Arnold diffusion in the case of real analytic mappings. They study the dynamics of an exact symplectic map in what they call a ``homoclinic channel''; this is a neighborhood of a normally hyperbolic two-dimensional cylinder (A) along with homoclinic cylinders (B) that intersect transversely with the stable and unstable manifolds of A. The authors proceed by reducing the problem to the study of an iterated function system. They show than an instability of the Arnold diffusion type (in particular, the existence of a drifting trajectory) arises when the exact symplectic maps that comprise the itererated function system do not have a common invariant curve. Consequently, the existence of drifting orbits is a generic phenomenon for analytic symplectic maps provided that the restriction of the map to cylinder A has a twist property.