Global Diffusion on a Tight Three-Sphere

Abstract

We consider an integrable Hamiltonian system weakly coupled with a pendulum-type system. For each energy level within some range, the uncoupled system is assumed to possess a normally hyperbolic invariant manifold diffeomorphic to a three-sphere, which bounds a strictly convex domain, and whose stable and unstable invariant manifolds coincide. The Hamiltonian flow on the three-sphere is equivalent to the Reeb flow for the induced contact form. The strict convexity condition implies that the contact structure on the three-sphere is tight. When a small, generic coupling is added to the system, the normally hyperbolic invariant manifold is preserved as a three-sphere, and the stable and unstable manifolds split, yielding transverse intersections. We show that there exist trajectories that follow any prescribed collection of invariant tori and Aubry–Mather sets within some global section of the flow restricted to the three-sphere. In this sense, we say that the perturbed system exhibits global diffusion on the tight three-sphere.