Nonlinear Phenomena in Physics: Proceedings of the 1984 Latin American School of Physics, Santiago, Chile, July 16–August 3, 1984 (Springer Proceedings in Physics, 3)

It was almost four hundred years ago that Galileo wrote in Il Saggiatore that the "Book of Nature is written in mathema ti ca 1 characters". Thi s sentence, i nspi red at the dawn of physics has proved with the passage of time to contain a deep truth and also a warning: in order to understand Nature, first we must learn to read mathema­ tical characters. Indeed, writing physical law in such characters has proved not as hard as unraveling the content of the resulting equations. In particular, the lack of knowledge in the field of nonlinear mathematics has been a severe limita­ tion in the past. Thus the solution to equations such as the Navier-Stokes equation in fluid dynamics has remained elusive. The recent advent of fast computers and some important analytical and numerical results in the study of bifurcations and nonlinear waves have encouraged work both in theory and experiment involving non­ linear phenomena. An explosive growth in the specialized literature penetrating most research areas in physics in the last few years has ensued. This book contains the most recent advances in nonlinear physics in various fields including astrophysics, gravitation, particle physics, quantum optics, fluid dynamics and the mathematics underlying the phenomena of chaos and nonlinear waves. It presents a selection from the lectures delivered at the XXI '\_atin American School of Physics held in Santiago, Chile in July-August 1984 (EtAF'84). Front Matter....Pages I-IX Front Matter....Pages 1-1 Dynamics for Golden Mean Rotation....Pages 2-15 Nonlinear Phenomena in Dissipative Systems....Pages 16-69 Statistical Mechanics of the sine-Gordon Field: Part I....Pages 70-102 Statistical Mechanics of the sine-Gorden Field: Part II....Pages 103-128 Probabilistic Cellular Automata....Pages 129-137 Front Matter....Pages 139-139 Chaos, Generalized Multistability and Low Frequency Spectra in Quantum Optics....Pages 140-161 From Optical Bistability to Chaos....Pages 162-225 Front Matter....Pages 227-227 Recent Developments in Rayleigh-Benard Convection and Interface Dynamics....Pages 228-236 Front Matter....Pages 237-237 Nonlinear Problems in Stellar Dynamics....Pages 238-254 Solitons in General Relativity and Supergravity....Pages 255-279 The Dynamics of Spacetime Curvature: Nonlinear Aspects....Pages 280-291 Front Matter....Pages 293-293 Unification, Supersymmetry and Cosmology....Pages 294-343 Lectures on Quark Flavor Mixing in the Standard Model....Pages 344-439 Back Matter....Pages 441-444