Chaotic Transitions in Deterministic and Stochastic Dynamical Systems

The classical Melnikov method provides information on the behavior of deterministic planar systems that may exhibit transitions, i.e. escapes from and captures into preferred regions of phase space. This book develops a unified treatment of deterministic and stochastic systems that extends the applicability of the Melnikov method to physically realizable stochastic planar systems with additive, state-dependent, white, colored, or dichotomous noise. The extended Melnikov method yields the novel r