KAM theory for some dissipative systems

Abstract

Dissipative systems play a very important role in several physical models, most notably in Celestial Mechanics, where the dissipation drives the motion of natural and artificial satellites, leading them to migration of orbits, resonant states, etc. Hence the need to develop theories that ensure the existence of structures such as invariant tori or periodic orbits and device efficient computational methods. In this work we concentrate on the existence of invariant tori for the specific case of dissipative systems known as "conformally symplectic" systems, which have the property that they transform the symplectic form into a multiple of itself. To give explicit examples of conformally symplectic systems, we will present two different models: a discrete system, the standard map, and a continuous system, the spin-orbit problem. In both cases we will consider the conservative and dissipative versions, that will help to highlight the differences between the symplectic and conformally symplectic dynamics. For such dissipative systems we will present a KAM theorem in an a-posteriori format. The method of proof is based on extending geometric identities originally developed in [39] for the symplectic case. Besides leading to streamlined proofs of KAM theorem, this method provides a very efficient algorithm which has been implemented. Coupling an efficient numerical algorithm with an a-posteriori theorem, we have a very efficient way to provide rigorous estimates close to optimal. Indeed, the method gives a criterion (the Sobolev blow up criterion) that allows to compute numerically the breakdown. We will review this method as well as an extension of J. Greene's method and present the results in the conservative and dissipative standard maps. Computing close to the breakdown, allows to discover new mathematical phenomena such as the "bundle collapse mechanism".