A geometric mechanism of diffusion: rigorous verification in a priori unstable Hamiltonian systems (Q630576)

The authors of this interesting paper consider a representative a priori unstable Hamiltonian system with \(2+1/2\) degrees of freedom and apply the geometric mechanism for diffusion introduced and being developed further by A. Delshams, R. de la Llave and T. M. Seara (2000-2008). A geometric mechanism for diffusion in Hamiltonian systems overcoming the large gap problem is shown. Some explicit, concrete and easily verifiable conditions for the existence of diffusing orbits are provided. The construction of the scattering map and the combination of two types of dynamics on a normally hyperbolic invariant manifold is fully described. The Hamiltonian considered here has the form \[ H_{\varepsilon }(p,q,I,\varphi , t)=\pm \biggl( p^2/2+\cos{q}-1 \biggr)+l^2/2+\varepsilon f(q)g(\varphi ,t), \] defined for any real value of \(p,q,I,\varphi , t, \varepsilon \) and \(2\pi \)-periodic in the angular variables \((q, \varphi , t)\). The function \(f\) could be any \(2\pi \)-periodic function, for instance \(f(q)=\cos{q}\). The function \(g\) has the form \[ g( \varphi ,t )=\sum_{(k,l)\in \mathbb{N}^2}a_{k,l}\cos{(k\varphi -lt -\sigma_{k,l})}. \] Here, a case is considered where the function is analytic, and the coefficients satisfy some estimates. The main result is that if either \(\lambda\equiv |a_{1,0}/a_{0,1}|<1/1.6\) or \(\lambda >1.6\) as well as some concrete estimates of the other \(a_{k,l}\), then for any \(I_{+}^{\ast }>0\) there exists a positive number \(\varepsilon ^{\ast }\) such that for any \(-1/2 <I_{-}<I_{+}\leq I_{+}^{\ast } \) and any \(0<\varepsilon < \varepsilon ^{\ast } \), there exists a traectory \((p(t), q(t), I(t), \varphi (t))\) of the perturbed Hamiltonian \(H_{\varepsilon }(p,q,I,\varphi , t)=H_0(p,q,I)+\varepsilon h(p,q,I,\varphi , t; \varepsilon )\) such that for some \(T>0\) the following inequalities hold true: \(I(0)\leq I_{-}\), \(I(T)\geq I_{+}\).