6170 Dynamical Systems

Instructor Yu Ilyashenko

Fall 2009



Office hours

Yu Ilyashenko (e-mail: yulij@math.cornell.edu): Wednesday, 4pm - 5pm in Malott 511

Philipp Meerkamp (TA, e-mail: pmeerkamp@math.cornell.edu): Monday, 2:30pm-4:30pm in Malott 218


Homeworks

You can download the homeworks here:
Homework 1
Homework 2
Homework 3
Homework 4
Homework 5
Homework 6
Homework 1 solutions
Homework 2 solutions
Homework 3 solutions


Course contents

Introduction. Philosophy  of generic position


Generic dynamical systems in the plane. Limit behavior of solutions; Andronov-Pontryagin criterion of structural stability; Poincare-Bendixson theorem


Elements of hyperbolic theory. Hadamard-Perron theorem; Smale horseshoe; elements of symbolic dynamics; Anosov diffeomorphisms of a torus and their structural stability; Grobman-Hartman theorem; normal hyperbolicity and persistence of invariant manifolds. 


Attractors. Lyapunov stability of equilibrium points and periodic orbits; maximal attractors and their fractal dimension; strange attractors, Smale-Williams solenoid.


Dynamical systems in low dimension. Diffeomorphisms of a circle; rotation number; periodic orbits; conjugacy to rigid rotation; flows on a torus; density; uniform distribution.


Elements of ergodic theory. Survey of measure theory; invariant measures of dynamical systems; Krylov-Bogolyubov theorem; Birkhoff-Khinchin ergodic theorem; ergodicity of nonresonant shifts and Anosov diffeomorphisms of a torus; geodesic flows; mixing.


Time permitting, some new results in attractors and hyperbolic theory will be presented. 


Reading

About 2/3 of the course will be covered by the books of Arnold "Geometric methods in the Theory of ordinary differential equations" and Katok and Hasselblat "Introduction to the Modern Theory of Dynamical Systems". Some part will be covered by lecture notes. 


Grading policy

There will be biweekly take-home assignments, that will count for 80% of the entire grade. The last homework will be a take-home final exam counting 20% for the grade.