Analytical Homoclinic Solution of a Two-Dimensional Nonlinear System of Differential Equations

Analytical solution of the homoclinic orbit of a two-dimensional system of differential equations that describes the Hamiltonian part of the slow flow of a three-degree-of-freedom dissipative system of linear coupled oscillators with an essentially nonlinear attachment is described. 1. Introduction A homoclinic orbit is the trajectory of a flow of dynamical system that joins a saddle equilibrium point to itself; that is, the homoclinic trajectory converges to the equilibrium point as [1]. The analytical solutions of homoclinic orbits are very important for many applications as in the use of the homoclinic Melnikov function, in order to prove the existence of transversal homoclinic orbits and chaotic behavior. In what follows, we find the analytical solution of the homoclinic orbit of a one-degree-of-freedom system of differential equations that describes the Hamiltonian part of the slow flow of a three-degree-of-freedom dissipative system of linear coupled oscillators with an essentially nonlinear attachment [2]. The aim of the work in [2] was to study the asymptotic behavior of the system. Specifically, the initial dissipative system composed of two linear and one nonlinear oscillators was reduced to a nonautonomous damped strongly nonlinear second-order differential equation. With the use of the complexification-averaging technique (CX-A), we obtained the slow flow of the system, that is, a system of two, first-order, differential equations governed by slow time where , are the variables and , , , , , are parameters. From the study of the dynamics of the slow flow [3], we concluded that the slow flow may do regular or chaotic oscillations. The computation of the analytical solution of the homoclinic orbit of the unperturbed problem is the first step in order to investigate the chaotic behavior, of the above system, with the use of the homoclinic Melnikov function. 2. Main Results The unperturbed part of the above system is and is a parameter. The equilibrium points are found considering , . After some simple algebraic manipulations, we have and the third-order equation When (4) has three real roots, we have three equilibrium points. It is well known that, in order (4) to have three real roots, it must hold that the determinant , where , , , , , and . This holds for where . The equilibrium points are where . The Hamiltonian of system (2) is given by We perform the canonical transformation , , and the hamiltonian becomes From the square of (9) by adding in both sides of the equation the quantity , we have From the hamiltonian (8), (10) becomes We denote