This volume contains the notes from five lecture courses devoted to nonautonomous differential systems, in which appropriate topological and dynamical techniques were described and applied to a variety of problems. The courses took place during the C.I.M.E. Session "Stability and Bifurcation Problems for Non-Autonomous Differential Equations," held in Cetraro, Italy, June 19-25 2011. Anna Capietto and Jean Mawhin lectured on nonlinear boundary value problems; they applied the Maslov index and degree-theoretic methods in this context. Rafael Ortega discussed the theory of twist maps with nonperiodic phase and presented applications. Peter Kloeden and Sylvia Novo showed how dynamical methods can be used to study the stability/bifurcation properties of bounded solutions and of attracting sets for nonautonomous differential and functional-differential equations. The volume will be of interest to all researchers working in these and related fields.

Bifurcation theory is a major topic in dynamical systems theory with profound applications. However, in contrast to autonomous dynamical systems, it is not clear what a bifurcation of a nonautonomous dynamical system actually is, and so far, various different approaches to describe qualitative changes have been suggested in the literature. The aim of this book is to provide a concise survey of the area and equip the reader with suitable tools to tackle nonautonomous problems. A review, discussion and comparison of several concepts of bifurcation is provided, and these are formulated in a unified notation and illustrated by means of comprehensible examples. Additionally, certain relevant tools needed in a corresponding analysis are presented.

The nature of time in a nonautonomous dynamical system is very different from that in autonomous systems, which depend only on the time that has elapsed since starting rather than on the actual time itself. Consequently, limiting objects may not exist in actual time as in autonomous systems. New concepts of attractors in nonautonomous dynamical system are thus required.In addition, the definition of a dynamical system itself needs to be generalised to the nonautonomous context. Here two possibilities are considered: two-parameter semigroups or processes and the skew product flows. Their attractors are defined in terms of families of sets that are mapped onto each other under the dynamics rather than a single set as in autonomous systems. Two types of attraction are now possible: pullback attraction, which depends on the behaviour from the system in the distant past, and forward attraction, which depends on the behaviour of the system in the distant future. These are generally independent of each other.The component subsets of pullback and forward attractors exist in actual time. The asymptotic behaviour in the future limit is characterised by omega-limit sets, in terms of which form what are called forward attracting sets. They are generally not invariant in the conventional sense, but are asymptotically invariant in general and, if the future dynamics is appropriately uniform, also asymptotically negatively invariant.Much of this book is based on lectures given by the authors in Frankfurt and Wuhan. It was written mainly when the first author held a 'Thousand Expert' Professorship at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.

This book focuses on bifurcation theory for autonomous and nonautonomous differential equations with discontinuities of different types – those with jumps present either in the right-hand side, or in trajectories or in the arguments of solutions of equations. The results obtained can be applied to various fields, such as neural networks, brain dynamics, mechanical systems, weather phenomena and population dynamics. Developing bifurcation theory for various types of differential equations, the book is pioneering in the field. It presents the latest results and provides a practical guide to applying the theory to differential equations with various types of discontinuity. Moreover, it offers new ways to analyze nonautonomous bifurcation scenarios in these equations. As such, it shows undergraduate and graduate students how bifurcation theory can be developed not only for discrete and continuous systems, but also for those that combine these systems in very different ways. At the same time, it offers specialists several powerful instruments developed for the theory of discontinuous dynamical systems with variable moments of impact, differential equations with piecewise constant arguments of generalized type and Filippov systems.

Aimed at the community of mathematicians working on ordinary and partial differential equations, difference equations, and functional equations, this book contains selected papers based on the presentations at the International Conference on Differential & Difference Equations and Applications (ICDDEA) 2015, dedicated to the memory of Professor Georg Sell. Contributions include new trends in the field of differential and difference equations, applications of differential and difference equations, as well as high-level survey results. The main aim of this recurring conference series is to promote, encourage, cooperate, and bring together researchers in the fields of differential & difference equations. All areas of differential and difference equations are represented, with special emphasis on applications.

These proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications cover the areas of difference equations, discrete dynamical systems, fractal geometry, difference equations and biomedical models, and discrete models in the natural sciences, social sciences and engineering. The conference was held at the Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Hubei, China), under the auspices of the International Society of Difference Equations (ISDE) in July 2014. Its purpose was to bring together renowned researchers working actively in the respective fields, to discuss the latest developments, and to promote international cooperation on the theory and applications of difference equations. This book will appeal to researchers and scientists working in the fields of difference equations, discrete dynamical systems and their applications.

Although, bifurcation theory of equations with autonomous and periodic time dependence is a major object of research in the study of dynamical systems since decades, the notion of a nonautonomous bifurcation is not yet established. In this book, two different approaches are developed which are based on special definitions of local attractivity and repulsivity. It is shown that these notions lead to nonautonomous Morse decompositions.

The Handbook of Mathematical Fluid Dynamics is a compendium of essays that provides a survey of the major topics in the subject. Each article traces developments, surveys the results of the past decade, discusses the current state of knowledge and presents major future directions and open problems. Extensive bibliographic material is provided. The book is intended to be useful both to experts in the field and to mathematicians and other scientists who wish to learn about or begin research in mathematical fluid dynamics. The Handbook illuminates an exciting subject that involves rigorous mathematical theory applied to an important physical problem, namely the motion of fluids.

Nonautonomous dynamics describes the qualitative behavior of evolutionary differential and difference equations, whose right-hand side is explicitly time dependent. Over recent years, the theory of such systems has developed into a highly active field related to, yet recognizably distinct from that of classical autonomous dynamical systems. This development was motivated by problems of applied mathematics, in particular in the life sciences where genuinely nonautonomous systems abound. The purpose of this monograph is to indicate through selected, representative examples how often nonautonomous systems occur in the life sciences and to outline the new concepts and tools from the theory of nonautonomous dynamical systems that are now available for their investigation.