Speaker: Evelyn Sander, George Mason University

Title: The dynamics of global bifurcations in low dimensions

Abstract: A discontinuous change in the size of an attractor is the most easily observed type of global bifurcation. More generally, an explosion is a discontinuous change in the set of recurrent points. For the past several years, I have been working to try to understand this type of bifurcation. The talk will include a discussion of progress in classifying the types of tangency bifurcations that result in explosions. Newhouse and Palis conjectured in 1976 that planar explosions are generically the result of either tangency or saddle node bifurcations. Recent results show this to be true in one dimension.

Place: Science and Technology Building I, Room 242

Refreshments will be served before the talk at 3:00 p.m. in Room 222.

Department of Mathematical Sciences
George Mason University
4400 University Drive, MS 3F2
Fairfax, VA 22030-4444
http://math.gmu.edu/
Tel. 703-993-1460, Fax. 703-993-1491