Noise in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems

Nature is inherently noisy and nonlinear. It is noisy in the sense that all macroscopic systems are subject to the fluctuations of their environments and also to internal fluctuations. It is nonlinear in the sense that the restoring force on a system displaced from equilibrium does not usually vary linearly with the size of the displacement. To calculate the properties of stochastic (noisy) nonlinear systems is in general extremely difficult, although considerable progress has been made in the past. The three volumes that make up Noise in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems comprise a collection of specially written authoritative reviews on all aspects of the subject, representative of all the major practitioners in the field. The third volume deals with experimental aspects of the study of noise in nonlinear dynamical systems. It covers noise-driven phenomena in superfluid helium, liquid crystals, lasers and optical bistability as well as the solution of stochastic equations by digital simulation and analogue experiment.