Measuring quasiperiodicity

Abstract

The Birkhoff Ergodic Theorem asserts under mild conditions that Birkhoff averages (i.e. time averages computed along a trajectory) converge to the space average. For sufficiently smooth systems, our small modification of numerical Birkhoff averages significantly speeds the convergence rate for quasiperiodic trajectories —by a factor of 1025 for 30-digit precision arithmetic— making it a useful computational tool for autonomous dynamical systems. Many dynamical systems and especially Hamiltonian systems are a complex mix of chaotic and quasiperiodic behaviors, and chaotic trajectories near quasiperiodic points can have long near-quasiperiodic transients. Our method can help determine which initial points are in a quasiperiodic set and which are chaotic. We use our weighted Birkhoff average to study quasiperiodic systems, to distinguishing between chaos and quasiperiodicity, and for computing rotation numbers for self-intersecting curves in the plane. Furthermore we introduce the Embedding Continuation Method which is a significantly simpler, general method for computing rotation numbers.