Variational construction of homoclinics and chaos in presence of a saddle-saddle equilibrium (Q1284725)

The authors consider autonomous Lagrangian systems of the form \[ -\ddot q+\psi(q)J\dot q+Aq=\nabla W(q)\tag{1} \] where \(q=(q_1,q_2) \in \mathbb{R}^2\), \(J=\left (\begin{smallmatrix} 0 & -1\\ 1 & 0 \end{smallmatrix}\right)\) and \(A= \left(\begin{smallmatrix} \lambda^2_1 & 0 \\ 0 & \lambda^2_2 \end{smallmatrix}\right)\). The authors are interested in the chaotic behavior of the dynamics of (1) on the zero energy level. Under some natural conditions on \(W\), the system (1) possesses two homoclinic orbits to hyperbolic equilibrium of saddle-saddle type with two different characteristic exponents. Using a nondegeneracy assumption on the homoclinics and suitable conditions on the geometric behaviour of these homoclinics near the equilibrium, it is shown by variational methods that they give rise to an infinite family of multibump homoclinic solutions. The authors show that the nondegeneracy assumption on the homoclinics can be relaxed when the two characteristic exponents are close to each other.