FREQUENCY ANALYSIS OF A DYNAMICAL SYSTEM

Frequency analysis is a new method for analyzing the stability of orbits in a conservative dynamical system. It was first devised in order to study the stability of the solar system (Laskar, Icarus, 88, 1990). It is a powerful method for analyzing weakly chaotic motion in hamiltonian systems or symplectic maps. For regular motions, it yields an analytical representation of the solutions. In cases of 2 degrees of freedom system with monotonous torsion, precise numerical criterions for the destruction of KAM tori can be found. For a 4D symplectic map, plotting the frequency map in the frequency plane provides a clear representation of the global dynamics and describes the actual Arnold web of the system.