Synergetics of Molecular Systems

Synergetics is the quantitative study of multicomponent systems that exhibit nonlinear dynamics and cooperativity. This book specifically considers basic models of the nonlinear dynamics of molecular systems and discusses relevant applications in biological physics and the polymer sciences.

Synergetics is the quantitative study of multicomponent systems that exhibit nonlinear dynamics and cooperativity. This book specifically considers basic models of the nonlinear dynamics of molecular systems and discusses relevant applications in biological physics and the polymer sciences.

Synergetics is the quantitative study of multicomponent systems that exhibit nonlinear dynamics and cooperativity. This book specifically considers basic models of the nonlinear dynamics of molecular systems and discusses relevant applications in biological physics and the polymer sciences.

Approach your problems from the It isn't that they can't see the end and begin with the answers. solution. It is that they can't Then one day, perhaps you will see the problem. find the final question. G.K. Chesterton. The Scandal of 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Father Brown 'The Point of a Pin'. Feathers' in R. van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of mono­ graphs and textbooks on increasingly topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical pro­ gramming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electric engineering can use Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging subdisciplines as "complete integrable systems", "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order", which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classifica­ tion schemes. The draw upon widely different sections of mathematics.

Approach your problems from the It isn't that they can't see the end and begin with the answers. solution. It is that they can't Then one day, perhaps you will see the problem. find the final question. G.K. Chesterton. The Scandal of 'The Hermit Clad in Crane Father Brown 'The Point of a Pin'. Feathers' in R. van Gulik's The Chinese Maze Murders. Growing specialization and diversification have brought a host of mono­ graphs and textbooks on increasingly topics. However, the "tree" of knowledge of mathematics and related fields does not grow only by putting forth new branches. It also happens, quite often in fact, that branches which were thought to be completely disparate are suddenly seen to be related. Further, the kind and level of sophistication of mathematics applied in various sciences has changed drastically in recent years: measure theory is used (non-trivially) in regional and theoretical economics; algebraic geometry interacts with physics; the Minkowsky lemma, coding theory and the structure of water meet one another in packing and covering theory; quantum fields, crystal defects and mathematical pro­ gramming profit from homotopy theory; Lie algebras are relevant to filtering; and prediction and electric engineering can use Stein spaces. And in addition to this there are such new emerging subdisciplines as "complete integrable systems", "chaos, synergetics and large-scale order", which are almost impossible to fit into the existing classifica­ tion schemes. The draw upon widely different sections of mathematics.

The fundamental goal of physics is an understanding of the forces of nature in their simplest and most general terms. Yet there is much more involved than just a basic set of equations which eventually has to be solved when applied to specific problems. We have learned in recent years that the structure of the ground state of field theories (with which we are generally concerned) plays an equally funda­ mental role as the equations of motion themselves. Heisenberg was probably the first to recognize that the ground state, the vacuum, could acquire certain prop­ erties (quantum numbers) when he devised a theory of ferromagnetism. Since then, many more such examples are known in solid state physics, e. g. supercon­ ductivity, superfluidity, in fact all problems concerned with phase transitions of many-body systems, which are often summarized under the name synergetics. Inspired by the experimental observation that also fundamental symmetries, such as parity or chiral symmetry, may be violated in nature, it has become wide­ ly accepted that the same field theory may be based on different vacua. Practical­ ly all these different field phases have the status of more or less hypothetical models, not (yet) directly accessible to experiments. There is one magnificent ex­ ception and this is the change of the ground state (vacuum) of the electron-posi­ tron field in superstrong electric fields.

Of the variety of nonlinear dynamical systems that exhibit deterministic chaos optical systems both lasers and passive devices provide nearly ideal systems for quantitative investigation due to their simplicity both in construction and in the mathematics that describes them. In view of their growing technical application the understanding, control and possible exploitation of sources of instability in these systems has considerable practical importance. The aim of this volume is to provide a comprehensive coverage of the current understanding of optical instabilities through a series of reviews by leading researchers in the field. The book comprises nine chapters, five on active (laser) systems and four on passive optically bistable systems. Instabilities and chaos in single- (and multi-) mode lasers with homogeneously and broadened gain media are presented and the influence of an injected signal, loss modulation and also feedback of laser output on this behaviour is treated. Both electrically excited and optically pumped gas lasers are considered, and an analysis of dynamical instabilities in the emission from free electron lasers are presented. Instabilities in passive optically bistable systems include a detailed analysis of the global bifurcations and chaos in which transverse effects are accounted for. Experimental verification of degenerative pulsations and chaos in intrinsic bistable systems is described for various optical feedback systems in which atomic and molecular gases and semiconductors are used as the nonlinear media. Results for a hybrid bistable optical system are significant in providing an important test of current understanding of the dynamical behaviour of passive bistable systems.