Transient chaos : complex dynamics on finite time scales / Ying-Cheng Lai, Tamás Tél

The purpose of this monograph is to introduce the reader to the exciting subject of transient chaos through a careful selection of results obtained over the last three decades. Being just temporal evolutions preceding the asymptotic dynamics, transients are important for the understanding of the evolution of many systems encountered in physics, biology, engineering, chemistry or social sciences. Various applications of transient chaos are listed at the very beginning in Table 1 with the references to chapters where they are dealt with. The material in the book is organized into the four parts which, in turn, are divided into chapters. In the first part, principal concepts, ideas, algorithms and theories required for understanding of transient chaos are discussed. The second part presents different physical manifestations of transient chaos. The topics addressed here include fractal basin boundaries, chaotic scattering, quantum chaotic scattering, and conductance fluctuations in nanostructures. ... (zbMath)