Universality in Chaos

Nature provides many examples of physical systems
which are described by deterministic equations of motion, but which nevertheless
exhibit non-predictable behaviour. The detailed description of turbulent motions
remains perhaps the outstanding unsolved problem of classical physics. In recent
years, however, a new theory has been formulated which succeeds in making
quantitative predictions describing certain transitions to turbulence. Its
significance lies in itspossible application to large classes (often very
dissimilar) of nonlinear systems.

The introduction to this book provides an intuitive
account of the key ideas of phase-space trajectories, Poincare maps, bifurcations
and local universality which are common to all nonlinear dynamical systems. The
41 collected papers which follow fall into four groups. The first section is a
general introduction to deterministic chaos and universality. The next 12 articles
emphasise the experimental evidence for the theory, with examples drawn from chemistry,
biology, optics, electronics and fluid mechanics. A survey of some detailed theoretical
considerations is followed by a section which looks forward to further
developments inspired by the success of the one-dimensional theory. The collection
is rounded off with an extensive list of references.

This is the first time that so many papers on this
subject have been gathered together from a wide range of sources into a single
volume, which should provide an indispensable reference work for researchers
and graduate students.