FROM BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEMS TO DIFFERENCE EQUATIONS: A METHOD OF INVESTIGATION OF CHAOTIC VIBRATIONS

Abstract

Among evolutionary boundary value problems for partial differential equations, there is a wide class of problems reducible to difference, differential-difference and other relevant equations. Of especial promise for investigation are problems that reduce to difference equations with continuous argument. Such problems, even in their simplest form, may exhibit solutions with extremely complicated long-time behavior to the extent of possessing evolutions that are indistinguishable from random ones when time is large. It is owing to the reduction to a difference equation followed by the employment of the properties of the one-dimensional map associated with the difference equation, that, it is in many cases possible to establish mathematical mechanisms for one or other type of dynamical behavior of solutions. The paper presents the overall picture in the study of boundary value problems reducible to difference equations (on which the authors have a direct bearing over the last ten years) and demonstrates with several simplest examples the potentialities that such a reduction opens up.