Arnold diffusion in arbitrary degrees of freedom and normally hyperbolic invariant cylinders (Q518166)

This paper considers a certain class of \(C^r\) Hamiltonians that are periodic in time and proves that Arnold diffusion occurs for many perturbations. The setting is as follows. On the phase space \(\mathbb{T}^n\times \mathbb{B}^n\) (where \(\mathbb{T}^n\) is the \(n\)-torus and \(\mathbb{B}^n\) is the unit ball around the origin in \(\mathbb{R}^n\)), the \(C^r\) time-periodic Hamiltonian is \[ H_\varepsilon(\theta,p,t)= H_0(p)+\varepsilon H_1(\theta,p,t), \] with \((\theta,p,t)\in\mathbb{T}^n\times \mathbb{B}^n\times\mathbb{T}\) and \(\varepsilon\geq 0\) is a small parameter. With \(\varepsilon= 0\), the equations \(\dot\theta=\partial_p H_0+\varepsilon\partial_p H_1\) and \(\dot p=-\varepsilon\partial_\theta H_1\) imply that the momenta \(p\) are constant. The authors investigate what happens when \(\varepsilon>0\). They assume that \(H_0\) is convex and then prove that a form of Arnold diffusion arises for many perturbations. The main result is the following: If \(S^r\) is the unit sphere in \(C^r(\mathbb{T}^n\times\mathbb{R}^n\times \mathbb{T})\) and \(r\geq 4\), then there exist two continuous functions \(l\) and \(\varepsilon_0\) in \(S^r\) that are positive on an open and dense set \(\mathcal{U}\subset S^r\) and an open and dense subset \(\mathcal{V}_1\) of \[ \mathcal{V}= \{H_0+\varepsilon H_1: H_1\in{\mathcal U}\text{ and }0<\varepsilon<\varepsilon_0(H_1)\} \] such that the following holds for each Hamiltonian \(H\in \mathcal{V}_1\): there exists an orbit \((\theta,p)\) of \(H_\varepsilon\) and a time \(T\in\mathbb{N}\) such that \(\| p(T)- p(0)\|> l(H_1)\), where \(l(H_1)\) does not depend on \(\varepsilon\) in the interval \((0,\varepsilon_0(H_1))\). The proof depends in a critical way on the existence of a normally hyperbolic invariant cylinder.