Normally elliptic singular perturbation problems: local invariant manifolds and applications

Abstract

In this thesis, we study the normally elliptic singular perturbation problems including both finite and infinite dimensional cases, which could also be non-autonomous. In particular, we establish the existence and smoothness of O(1) local invariant manifolds and provide various estimates which are independent of small singular parameters. We also use our results on local invariant manifolds to study the persistence of homoclinic solutions under weakly dissipative and conservative per- turbations. We apply Semi-group Theory and Lyapunov-Perron Integral Equations with some careful estimates to handle the O(1) driving force in the system so that we can approximate the full system through some simpler limiting system. In the investigation of homoclinics, a diagonalization procedure and some normal form transformation should be first carried out. Such diagonalization procedure is not trivial at all. We discuss this issue in the appendix. We use Melnikov type analysis to study the weakly dissipative case, while the conservative case is based on some energy methods. As a concrete example, we have shown rigrously the persistence of homoclinic solutions of an elastic pendulum model which may be affected by damping, external forcing and other potential fields.