Intersections of Lagrangian submanifolds and the Mel'nikov 1-form (Q2507870)

Mel'nikov studied time-periodic perturbations of 2-dimensional time-independent Hamiltonian systems dealing with deformations of the stable and unstable Lagrangian submanifolds. It is known that the deformation theory of Lagrangian submanifolds is parameterized by closed 1-forms. The Mel'nikov 1-form is closed and exact by geometric reasons. His method has two aspects: the heteroclinic orbits correspond to the zeros of a geometric object, namely the Mel'nikov 1-form, and one tries to give this 1-form an integral expression involving only the flow of the unperturbed dynamics. The extension of Mel'nikov technique for detecting heteroclinic orbits linking two transversally hyperbolic periodic orbits or tori has been investigated by many authors. However, they consider dynamical systems having the common feature that there is a separation between the longitudinal and transversal variables, corresponding, respectively, to the motion along the tori and the hyperbolic transversal motion. It is known that resorting to explicit coordinates has several drawbacks. The author clarifies the geometric content of Mel'nikov's method without reference to any coordinate systems, which extends to higher-dimensional systems on general symplectic manifolds, for detecting heteroclinic points linking two hyperbolic periodic orbits. He develops the general theory of intersections for pairs of families of Lagrangian submanifolds and shows how the heteroclinic orbits of a given Hamiltonian system are detected by the zeros of the Mel'nikov 1-form, and that the 1-form admits an integral expression.