Journal of Nonlinear Science

The dynamical behavior of the damped sine-Gordon equation with homogeneous Neumann boundary condition is studied. It is shown that the equation has an unbounded one-dimensional global attractor in a suitable functional space when the ``damping'' and the ``diffusing'' are not very small.

Considered here are model equations for weakly nonlinear and dispersive long waves, which feature general forms of dispersion and pure power nonlinearity. Two variants of such equations are introduced, one of Korteweg-de Vries type and one of regularized long-wave type. It is proven that solutions of the pure initial-value problem for these two types of model equations are the same, to within the order of accuracy attributable to either, on the long time scale during which nonlinear and dispersive effects may accumulate to make an order-one relative difference to the wave profiles.

The equations of motion for a system of point vortices on an oriented Riemannian surface of finite topological type are presented. The equations are obtained from a Green’s function on the surface. The uniqueness of the Green’s function is established under hydrodynamic conditions at the surface’s boundaries and ends. The hydrodynamic force on a point vortex is computed using a new weak formulation of Euler’s equation adapted to the point vortex context. An analogy between the hydrodynamic force on a massive point vortex and the electromagnetic force on a massive electric charge is presented as well as the equations of motion for massive vortices. Any noncompact Riemann surface admits a unique Riemannian metric such that a single vortex in the surface does not move (“Steady Vortex Metric”). Some examples of surfaces with steady vortex metric isometrically embedded in $$\mathbb {R}^3$$ are presented.

The global dynamics of flexible spinning discs are studied. The discs studied are parametrically excited in their spin rate, and have imperfections that cause symmetry-breaking. After determining the equations of motion in a suitable form, the energy-phase method is employed to show the existence of chaotic dynamics by identifying multipulse jumping orbits in the perturbed phase space. We provide restrictions on the damping, forcing, and symmetry-breaking parameters in order for these complicated dynamics to occur. The dissipative version of the energy-phase method predicts a wider range of values for which chaotic dynamics occurs than the traditional Melnikov method. The results are then discussed in terms of the physical motion of the spinning disc system. The multipulse orbits are manifested in the physical system as a shifting between two different nodal configurations of the disc. When the motion is chaotic, an observer will see a random jumping between the two nodal configurations of the disc.

The first of N identical independently distributed (i.i.d.) Brownian trajectories that arrives to a small target sets the time scale of activation, which in general is much faster than the arrival to the target of a single trajectory only. Analytical asymptotic expressions for the minimal time is notoriously difficult to compute in general geometries. We derive here asymptotic laws for the probability density function of the first and second arrival times of a large number N of i.i.d. Brownian trajectories to a small target in 1, 2 and 3-dimensions and study their range of validity by stochastic simulations. The results are applied to activation of biochemical pathways in cellular biology.

In this paper, we present a discrete model to illustrate how two pieces of information interact with online social networks and investigate the dynamics of discrete-time information diffusion model in three types: reverse type, intervention type and mutualistic type. It is found that the model has orbits with period 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, 20, 30, quasiperiodic orbit, and undergoes heteroclinic bifurcation near 1:2 point, a homoclinic structure near 1:3 resonance point and an invariant cycle bifurcated by period 4 orbit near 1:4 resonance point. Moreover, in order to regulate information diffusion process and information security, we give two control strategies, the hybrid control method and the feedback controller of polynomial functions, to control chaos, flip bifurcation, 1:2, 1:3 and 1:4 resonances, respectively, in the two-dimensional discrete system.

In this paper, we study the dynamics of a small rigid body in a viscous incompressible fluid in dimension two and three. More precisely we investigate the trajectory of the rigid body in the limit when its mass and its size tend to zero. We show that the velocity of the center of mass of the rigid body coincides with the background fluid velocity in the limit. We are able to consider the limit when the volume of the rigid bodies converges to zero while their densities are a fixed constant.