Dynamical Systems in Cosmology

Dynamical systems theory is especially well-suited for determining the possible asymptotic states (at both early and late times) of cosmological models, particularly when the governing equations are a finite system of autonomous ordinary differential equations.

There have been many books on Dynamical Astronomy up to now. Many are devoted to Celestial Mechanics, but there are also several books on Stellar and Galactic Dynamics. The first books on stellar dynamics dealt mainly with the statistics of stellar motions (e. g. Smart's "Stellar Dynamics" (1938), or Trumpler and Weaver's "Statistical Astronomy" (1953)). A classical book in this field is Chandrasekhar's "Principles of Stellar Dynamics" (1942) that dealt mainly with the time of relaxation, the solutions of Liouville's equation, and the dynamics of clusters. In the Dover edition of this book (1960) an extended Appendix was added, containing the statistical mechanics of stellar systems, a quite "modern" subject at that time. The need for a classroom book was covered for several years by the book of Mihalas and Routly "Galactic Astronomy" (1969).

by Shaun Bullett (Author), Tom Fearn (Editor), Frank Smith (Editor)

The main theme of the book is the presentation of techniques used to identify chaotic behavior in the evolution of conservative mechanical systems and their application to astronomical systems. It results from graduate courses given by the author over the years both at university and at several international summer schools.