The main purpose of the book is to acquaint mathematicians, physicists and engineers with classical mechanics as a whole, in both its traditional and its contemporary aspects. As such, it describes the fundamental principles, problems, and methods of classical mechanics, with the emphasis firmly laid on the working apparatus, rather than the physical foundations or applications. Chapters cover the n-body problem, symmetry groups of mechanical systems and the corresponding conservation laws, the problem of the integrability of the equations of motion, the theory of oscillations and perturbation theory.

From the reviews: "... As an encyclopaedia article, this book does not seek to serve as a textbook, nor to replace the original articles whose results it describes. The book's goal is to provide an overview, pointing out highlights and unsolved problems, and putting individual results into a coherent context. It is full of historical nuggets, many of them surprising. ... The examples are especially helpful; if a particular topic seems difficult, a later example frequently tames it. The writing is refreshingly direct, never degenerating into a vocabulary lesson for its own sake. The book accomplishes the goals it has set for itself. While it is not an introduction to the field, it is an excellent overview. ..." American Mathematical Monthly, Nov. 1989 "This is a book to curl up with in front of a fire on a cold winter's evening. ..." SIAM Reviews, Sept. 1989

The main purpose of the book is to acquaint mathematicians, physicists and engineers with classical mechanics as a whole, in both its traditional and its contemporary aspects. As such, it describes the fundamental principles, problems, and methods of classical mechanics, with the emphasis firmly laid on the working apparatus, rather than the physical foundations or applications. Chapters cover the n-body problem, symmetry groups of mechanical systems and the corresponding conservation laws, the problem of the integrability of the equations of motion, the theory of oscillations and perturbation theory.

The dynamics of physical, chemical, biological, or fluid systems generally must be described by nonlinear models, whose detailed mathematical solutions are not obtainable. To understand some aspects of such dynamics, various complementary methods and viewpoints are of crucial importance. In this book the perspectives generated by analytical, topological and computational methods, and interplays between them, are developed in a variety of contexts. This book is a comprehensive introduction to this field, suited to a broad readership, and reflecting a wide range of applications. Some of the concepts considered are: topological equivalence; embeddings; dimensions and fractals; Poincaré maps and map-dynamics; empirical computational sciences vis-á-vis mathematics; Ulam's synergetics; Turing's instability and dissipative structures; chaos; dynamic entropies; Lorenz and Rossler models; predator-prey and replicator models; FPU and KAM phenomena; solitons and nonsolitons; coupled maps and pattern dynamics; cellular automata.

Introduces Hamiltonian dynamics from the very beginning, culminating in the most important recent results: Kolmogorov's and Nekhoroshev's.

When this book was first published (in Russian), it proved to become the fountainhead of a major stream of important papers in mathematics, physics and even chemistry; indeed, it formed the basis of new methodology and opened new directions for research. The present English edition includes new examples of applications to physics, hitherto unpublished or available only in Russian. Its central mathematical idea is to use topological methods to analyze isotropic invariant manifolds in order to obtain asymptotic series of eigenvalues and eigenvectors for the multi-dimensional Schrödinger equation, and also to take into account the so-called tunnel effects. Finite-dimensional linear theory is reviewed in detail. Infinite-dimensional linear theory and its applications to quantum statistics and quantum field theory, as well as the nonlinear theory (involving instantons), will be considered in a second volume.

It is now a well established tradition that every four years, at the end of winter, a group of "celestial mechanicians" from all over the world gather at the "Alpen gasthof Peter Rosegger" in the Styrian Alps (Ramsau, Austria). This time the colloquium was held from March 17 to March 23, 1996 and was devoted to the Dynamical Behaviour of our Planetary System. The papers covered a large range of questions of current interest: theoretical questions (re- nances, universal properties, non integrability, transport, ... ) and questions about numerical tools ( symplectic maps, indicators of chaos, ... ) were particularly well represented; the never ending problem of the sculpting of the asteroid belt was also qui te popular. You will find in the following pages a pot-pourri of what we listen to; you will miss of course the diversity of accents with which the tunes were delivered: from China, from Japan, from Brazil, from the United-States of America and from all over Europe, East and West. Let us not forget that the comet 199682 (Hyakutake) came to visit us; many an evening was spent on the deck of the Alpengasthof contemplating this celestial visitor who liked to play hide-and-seek behind the spruce trees.

This book offers a systematic presentation of a variety of methods and results concerning integrable systems of classical mechanics. The investigation of integrable systems was an important line of study in the last century, but up until recently only a small number of examples with two or more degrees of freedom were known. In the last fifteen years however, remarkable progress has been made in this field via the so-called isospectral deformation method which makes extensive use of group-theoretical concepts. The book focuses mainly on the development and applications of this new method, and also gives a fairly complete survey of the older classic results. Chapter 1 contains the necessary background material and outlines the isospectral deformation method in a Lie-algebraic form. Chapter 2 gives an account of numerous previously known integrable systems. Chapter 3 deals with many-body systems of generalized Calogero-Moser type, related to root systems of simple Lie algebras. Chapter 4 is devoted to the Toda lattice and its various modifications seen from the group-theoretic point of view. Chapter 5 investigates some additional topics related to many-body systems. The book will be valuable to students as well as researchers.

A unified treatment of resonant problems with special emphasis on the recently discovered phenomenon of homoclinic jumping. After a survey of the necessary background, the book develops a general finite dimensional theory of homoclinic jumping, illustrating it with examples. The main mechanism of chaos near resonances is discussed in both the dissipative and the Hamiltonian context, incorporating previously unpublished new results on universal homoclinic bifurcations near resonances, as well as on multi-pulse Silnikov manifolds. The results are applied to a variety of different problems, which include applications from beam oscillations, surface wave dynamics, nonlinear optics, atmospheric science and fluid mechanics.

"This volume ... consists of a book with full texts of invited talks and attached CD-ROM with Extended Summaries of 1225 papers presented during the Congress"--p. x.