Dr Michele Bartuccelli

In this work, we have introduced and then computed the so-called crest factor associated with solutions of dissipative partial differential equations (PDEs). By taking two paradigmatic dissipative PDEs, we estimated in an explicit and accurate manner the values of the crest factor of their solutions. We then analysed and compared the estimates as a function of the positive parameter which appears in the PDEs in space dimensions one and two. These estimates shed some light on the dynamics of the fluctuations of the solutions of the two model PDEs, and therefore provide a criterion for discerning between small and large potential excursions in space for the solution of any dissipative PDE. Being able to detect between small and large intermittent fluctuations is one of the hallmarks of turbulence. We believe that the crest factor is an appropriate tool for extracting space fluctuation features in solutions of dissipative PDEs.

We present some integrable time-dependent systems of classical dynamics, and we apply the results to the equation x.. + f(t)x = 0, with f a positive nondecreasing differentiable function; some of the results are extended to the nonlinear case. Moreover we investigate the conditions for the solutions to be bounded and we study their asymptotic behaviour.

We consider a class of second order ordinary differential equations describing one-dimensional systems with a quasi-periodic analytic forcing term and in the presence of damping. As a physical application one can think of a resistor-inductor-varactor circuit with a periodic (or quasi-periodic) forcing function, even if the range of applicability of the theory is much wider. In the limit of large damping we look for quasi-periodic solutions which have the same frequency vector of the forcing term, and we study their analyticity properties in the inverse of the damping coefficient. We find that already the case of periodic forcing terms is non-trivial, as the solution is not analytic in a neighbourhood of the origin: it turns out to be Borel-summable. In the case of quasi-periodic forcing terms we need Renormalization Group techniques in order to control the small divisors arising in the perturbation series. We show the existence of a summation criterion of the series in this case also, but, however, this can not be interpreted as Borel summability.

We consider two forced dissipative pendulum systems, the pendulum with vertically oscillating support and the pendulum with periodically varying length, with a view to draw comparisons between their behaviour. We study the two systems for values of the parameters for which the dynamics are non-chaotic. We focus our investigation on the persisting attractive periodic orbits and their basins of attraction, utilising both analytical and numerical techniques. Although in some respect the two systems have similar behaviour, we find that even within the perturbation regime they may exhibit different dynamics. In particular, for the same value of the amplitude of the forcing, the pendulum with varying length turns out to be perturbed to a greater extent. Furthermore the periodic attractors persist under larger values of the damping coefficient in the pendulum with varying length. Finally, unlike the pendulum with oscillating support, the pendulum with varying length cannot be stabilised around the upward position for any values of the parameters.

In this work we have obtained explicit and accurate estimates of the sup-norm for solutions of the Swift-Hohenberg Equation (SHE) in one and two space dimensions. By using the best (so far) available estimates of the embedding constants which appear in the classical functional interpolation inequalities used in the study of solutions of dissipative partial differential equations, we have evaluated in an explicit manner the values of the sup-norm of the solutions of the SHE. In addition we have calculated the so-called time-averaged dissipative length scale associated to the above solutions. © 2013 .

We consider a class of ordinary differential equations describing one-dimensional analytic systems with a quasiperiodic forcing term and in the presence of damping. In the limit of large damping, under some generic nondegeneracy condition on the force, there are quasiperiodic solutions which have the same frequency vector as the forcing term. We prove that such solutions are Borel summable at the origin when the frequency vector is either any one-dimensional number or a twodimensional vector such that the ratio of its components is an irrational number of constant type. In the first case the proof given simplifies that provided in a previous work of ours. We also show that in any dimension d, for the existence of a quasiperiodic solution with the same frequency vector as the forcing term, the standard Diophantine condition can be weakened into the Bryuno condition. In all cases, under a suitable positivity condition, the quasiperiodic solution is proved to describe a local attractor.

We consider a class of parametrically forced Hamiltonian systems with one-and-a-half degrees of freedom and study the stability of the dynamics when the frequency of the forcing is relatively high or low. We show that, provided the frequency of the forcing is sufficiently high, KAM theorem may be applied even when the forcing amplitude is far away from the perturbation regime. A similar result is obtained for sufficiently low frequency forcing, but in that case we need the amplitude of the forcing to be not too large; however we are still able to consider amplitudes of the forcing which are outside of the perturbation regime. Our results are illustrated by means of numerical simulations for the system of a forced cubic oscillator. In addition, we find numerically that the dynamics are stable even when the forcing amplitude is very large (beyond the range of validity of the analytical results), provided the frequency of the forcing is taken correspondingly low.

We consider dissipative periodically forced systems and investigate cases in which having information as to how the system behaves for constant dissipation may be used when dissipation varies in time before settling at a constant final value. First, we consider situations where one is interested in the basins of attraction for damping coefficients varying linearly between two given values over many different time intervals: we outline a method to reduce the computation time required to estimate numerically the relative areas of the basins and discuss its range of applicability. Second, we observe that sometimes very slight changes in the time interval may produce abrupt large variations in the relative areas of the basins of attraction of the surviving attractors: we show how comparing the contracted phase space at a time after the final value of dissipation has been reached with the basins of attraction corresponding to that value of constant dissipation can explain the presence of such variations. Both procedures are illustrated by application to a pendulum with periodically oscillating support.

We present a class of Hill's equations possessing explicit solutions through elementary functions. In addition we provide some applications by using some of the paradigmatic systems of classical dynamics, such as the pendulum with variable length. © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

In this work we have analysed the nature of space fluctuations in dissipative Partial Differential Equations (PDEs). By taking a well known and much investigated dissipative PDE as our representative, namely the Swift–Hohenberg Equation, we estimated in an explicit manner the values of the crest factor of its solutions. We believe that the crest factor, namely the ratio between the sup-norm and the L2 norm of solutions, is a suitable and proper measure of space fluctuations in solutions of dissipative PDEs. In particular it gives some information on the nature of “soft” and “hard” fluctuations regimes in the flows of dissipative PDEs.

We consider a class of differential equations, x¨ + γ x˙ + g(x) = f (ωt), with ω ∈ Rd , describing onedimensional dissipative systems subject to a periodic or quasi-periodic (Diophantine) forcing. We study existence and properties of trajectories with the same quasi-periodicity as the forcing. For g(x) = x2p+1, p ∈ N, we show that, when the dissipation coefficient is large enough, there is only one such trajectory and that it describes a global attractor. In the case of more general nonlinearities, including g(x) = x2 (describing the varactor equation), we find that there is at least one trajectory which describes a local attractor.

We consider dissipative one-dimensional systems subject to a periodic force and study numerically how a time-varying friction affects the dynamics. As a model system, particularly suited for numerical analysis, we investigate the driven cubic oscillator in the presence of friction. We find that, if the damping coefficient increases in time up to a final constant value, then the basins of attraction of the leading resonances are larger than they would have been if the coefficient had been fixed at that value since the beginning. From a quantitative point of view, the scenario depends both on the final value and the growth rate of the damping coefficient. The relevance of the results for the spin-orbit model are discussed in some detail.

We consider the planar pendulum with support point oscillating in the vertical direction; the upside-down position of the pendulum corresponds to an equilibrium point for the projection of the motion on the pendulum phase space. By using the Lindstedt series method recently developed in literature starting from the pioneering work by Eliasson, we show that such an equilibrium point is stable for a full measure subset of the stability region of the linearized system inside the two-dimensional space of parameters, by proving the persistence of invariant KAM tori for the two-dimensional Hamiltonian system describing the model.

We consider a pendulum with vertically oscillating support and time-dependent damping coefficient which varies until reaching a finite final value. The sizes of the corresponding basins of attraction are found to depend strongly on the full evolution of the dissipation. In order to predict the behaviour of the system, it is essential to understand how the sizes of the basins of attraction for constant dissipation depend on the damping coefficient. For values of the parameters in the perturbation regime, we characterise analytically the conditions under which the attractors exist and study numerically how the sizes of their basins of attraction depend on the damping coefficient. Away from the perturbation regime, a numerical study of the attractors and the corresponding basins of attraction for different constant values of the damping coefficient produces a much more involved scenario: changing the magnitude of the dissipation causes some attractors to disappear either leaving no trace or producing new attractors by bifurcation, such as period doubling and saddle-node bifurcation. For an initially non-constant damping coefficient, both increasing and decreasing to some finite final value, we numerically observe that, when the damping coefficient varies slowly from a finite initial value to a different final value, without changing the set of attractors, the slower the variation the closer the sizes of the basins of attraction are to those they have for constant damping coefficient fixed at the initial value. If during the variation of the damping coefficient attractors appear or disappear, remarkable additional phenomena may occur. For instance, a fixed point asymptotically may attract the entire phase space, up to a zero measure set, even though no attractor with such a property exists for any value of the damping coefficient between the extreme values.

In this paper we derive a stage-structured model for a single species on a finite one-dimensional lattice. There is no migration into or from the lattice. The resulting system of equations, to be solved for the total adult population on each patch, is a system of delay equations involving the maturation delay for the species, and the delay term is nonlocal involving the population on all patches. We prove that the model has a positivity preserving property. The main theorems of the paper are comparison principles for the cases when the birth function is increasing and when the birth function is a nonmonotone function. Using these theorems we prove results on the global stability of a positive equilibrium.

In the framework of KAM theory, the persistence of invariant tori in quasi-integrable systems is proved by assuming a non-resonance condition on the frequencies, such as the standard Diophantine condition or the milder Bryuno condition. In the presence of dissipation, most of the quasi-periodic solutions disappear and one expects, at most, only a few of them to survive together with the periodic attractors. However, to prove that a quasi-periodic solution really exists, usually one assumes that the frequencies still satisfy a Diophantine condition and, furthermore, that some external parameters of the system are suitably tuned with them. In this paper we consider a class of systems on the one-dimensional torus, subject to a periodic perturbation and in the presence of dissipation, and show that, however small the dissipation, if the perturbation is a trigonometric polynomial in the angles and the unperturbed frequencies satisfy a non-resonance condition of finite order, depending on the size of the dissipation, then a quasi-periodic solution exists with slightly perturbed frequencies provided the size of the perturbation is small enough. If on the one hand the maximal size of the perturbation is not uniform in the degree of the trigonometric polynomial, on the other hand all but finitely many frequencies are allowed and there is no restriction arising from the tuning of the external parameters. A physically relevant case, where the result applies, is the spin-orbit model, which describes the rotation of a satellite around its own axis, while revolving on a Keplerian orbit around a planet, in the case in which the dissipation is taken into account through the MacDonald torque.

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Sharp estimates are obtained for the constants appearing in the Sobolev embedding theorem for the L°° norm on the d-dimensioned torus for d = 1,2,3. The sharp constants are expressed in terms of the Riemann zeta-function, the Dirichlet beta-series and various lattice sums. We then provide some applications including the two dimensional Navier-Stokes equations.

We consider a parametrically-driven nonlinear ODE, which encompasses a simple model of an electronic circuit known as a parametric amplifier, whose linearisation has a zero eigenvalue. By adopting two different approaches we obtain conditions for the origin to be a global attractor which is approached (a) non-monotonically and (b) monotonically. In case (b), we obtain an asymptotic expression for the convergence to the origin. Some further numerical results are reported.

We give a comprehensive study of interpolation inequalities for periodic functions with zero mean, including the existence of and the asymptotic expansions for the extremals, best constants, various remainder terms, etc. Most attention is paid to the critical (logarithmic) Sobolev inequality in the two-dimensional case, although a number of results concerning the best constants in the algebraic case and different space dimensions are also obtained.

We consider the Modified Kuramoto–Sivashinky Equation (MKSE) in one and two space dimensions and we obtain explicit and accurate estimates of various Sobolev norms of the solutions. In particular, by using the sharp constants which appear in the functional interpolation inequalities used in the analysis of partial differential equations, we evaluate explicitly the sup-norm of the solutions of the MKSE. Furthermore we introduce and then compute the so-called crest factor associated with the above solutions. The crest factor provides information on the distortion of the solution away from its space average and therefore, if it is large, gives evidence of strong turbulence. Here we find that the time average of the crest factor scales like λ(2d−1)/8 for λ large, where λ is the bifurcation parameter of the source term and d=1,2 is the space dimension. This shows that strong turbulence cannot be attained unless the bifurcation parameter is large enough.

In this Letter we obtain the dissipative length scale for the Navier–Stokes equations on a two-dimensional rotating sphere S2. This system is a fundamental model of the large scale atmospheric dynamics. Using the equations of motion in their vorticity form, we construct the ladder inequalities from which a set of time-averaged length scales is obtained.

Results on the dynamics of the planar pendulum with parametric vertical timeperiodic forcing are reviewed and extended. Numerical methods are employed to study the various dynamical features of the system about its equilibrium positions. Furthermore, the dynamics of the system far from its equilibrium points is systematically investigated by using phase portraits and Poincaré sections. The attractors and the associated basins of attraction are computed. We also calculate the Lyapunov exponents to show that for some parameter values the dynamics of the pendulum shows sensitivity to initial conditions.

In this paper, we make a detailed study of the spin-orbit dynamics of Mercury, as predicted by the realistic model which has been recently introduced in a series of papers mainly by Efroimsky and Makarov. We present numerical and analytical results concerning the nature of the librations of Mercury’s spin in the 3:2 resonance. The results provide evidence that the librations are quasi-periodic in time, consisting of a slow oscillation, with an amplitude of order of arcminutes, superimposed on the 88-day libration. This contrasts with recent astronomical observations and hence suggests that the 3:2 resonance in which Mercury has been trapped might have been originally described by a large-amplitude quasi-periodic libration which, only at a later stage, with the formation of a molten core, evolved into the small-amplitude libration which is observed nowadays.

In this work we investigate the connection between two fundamental features of solutions of partial differential equations (PDEs), namely the crest factor and the length scale associated to each solution. We illustrate how the crest factor of solutions of some linear and non-linear PDEs, including the incompressible two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations, has the capability for detecting turbulent and non-turbulent behaviour.

In this paper we investigate the semilinear partial differential equation ut = -fuxxxx - uxx + u(1 - u2) with a view, particularly, to obtaining some insight into how one might establish positivity preservation results for equations containing fourth-order spatial derivatives. The maximum principle cannot be applied to such equations. However, progress can be made by employing some very recent 'best possible' interpolation inequalities, due to the third-named author, in which the interpolation constants are both explicitly known and sharp. These are used to estimate the LX distance between u and 1 during the evolution. A positivity preservation result can be obtained under certain restrictions on the initial datum. We also establish an explicit two-sided estimate for the fractal dimension of the attractor, which is sharp in terms of the physical parameters.

We revisit a problem considered by Chow and Hale on the existence of subharmonic solutions for perturbed systems. In the analytic setting, under more general (weaker) conditions, we prove their results on the existence of bifurcation curves from the nonexistence to the existence of subharmonic solutions. In particular our results apply also when one has degeneracy to first order -- i.e. when the subharmonic Melnikov function vanishes identically. Moreover we can deal as well with the case in which degeneracy persists to arbitrarily high orders, in the sense that suitable generalisations to higher orders of the subharmonic Melnikov function are also identically zero. In general the bifurcation curves are not analytic, and even when they are smooth they can form cusps at the origin: we say in this case that the curves are degenerate as the corresponding tangent lines coincide. The technique we use is completely different from that of Chow and Hale, and it is essentially based on rigorous perturbation theory.

We present an algorithm for the rapid numerical integration of a time-periodic ODE with a small dissipation term that is C1 in the velocity. Such an ODE arises as a model of spin-orbit coupling in a star/planet system, and the motivation for devising a fast algorithm for its solution comes from the desire to estimate probability of capture in various solutions, via Monte Carlo simulation: the integration times are very long, since we are interested in phenomena occurring on timescales of the order of 106{ 107 years. The proposed algorithm is based on the High-order Euler Method (HEM) which was described in [Bartuccelli et al. 2015], and it requires computer algebra to set up the code for its implementation. The pay-o is an overall increase in speed by a factor of about 7:5 compared to standard numerical methods. Means for accelerating the purely numerical computation are also discussed.