Applications of catastrophe theory to the physical sciences

Abstract

Catastrophe Theory was introduced by René Thom in the late 1960's, as an attempt to model morphogentic changes in nature using ideas from topological dynamics and the theory of singularities of mappings. Thom envisaged a very general approach to topological changes in the solutions to parametrized systems of equations (such as differential and difference equations), and in particular discussed the special case of ‘elementary’ catastrophe theory: singularities of smooth real-valued functions. Popular expositions have tended to overemphasize this special case, but it remains the major source of ideas and methods. Here we survey the applications of Catastrophe Theory to the physical sciences (physics, chemistry, engineering, fluid mechanics, etc.). For brevity we confine attention to an area lying between ‘elementary’ and ‘general’ Catastrophe Theory, usually known as Singularity Theory. This is the theory of singularities of smooth vector-valued functions, which mathematically is a straightforward (though non-trivial) generalization of the real-valued case. In the last few years it has developed into a powerful and useful technique in several areas of theoretical physics, notably optics and bifurcation theory. Equivariant Catastrophe Theory, taking account of symmetry, is likely to prove especially interesting.