Density of chaotic dynamics in periodically forced pendulum-type equations (Q2568659)

Some results on the periodically forced pendulum equation \(\ddot{u}+g(u(t))=h(t)\) are stated under the assumption that both \(g\) and \(h\) are periodic in their argument with zero mean value. It is shown that for a dense set of such forcing terms \(h\), the equation exhibits chaotic behaviour in the following sense: There exist infinitely many periodic orbits and uncountably many bounded nonperiodic orbits, the solutions depend sensitively on initial conditions and the period map has positive topological entropy. This is a consequence of the existence of a class of multibump heteroclinic orbits which are asymptotic to periodic orbits. The authors give an outline on how to construct such heteroclinic orbits for suitable forcing functions by global variational methods. In particular, one does neither need to assume hyperbolicity of the periodic orbits nor transversality of some invariant manifolds. Details of the proofs can be found in another paper of the authors [J. Differ. Equations 180, No. 1, 99-124, (2002; Zbl 1012.34040)]