Synergetics and Dynamic Instabilities

Introductory remarks (G. Caglioti and H. Haken). Synergetics, its microscopic and macroscopic foundation (H. Haken). Instabilities and chaos in lasers: introduction to hyperchaos (F.T. Arecchi). Optical instabilities (L.A. Lugiato and L.M. Narducci). Dynamics of the bistable laser with saturable absorber (E. Arimondo). Quantum tunnelling in dispersive optical bistability (F. Haake). Mechanical instabilities of metals - I: An introduction (G. Caglioti). Mechanical instabilities of metals - II: Experimental methods (M.G. Beghi). Mechanical instabilities of metals - III: Breakaway instability in a population of interacting dislocations (C.E. Bottani). Biological pattern formation and physico-chemical laws (A. Gierer). Phase transitions and instabilities (G. Venkataraman and V. Balakrishnan). Thermohydrodynamic instabilities (J.L. Castillo, P.L. Garcia-Ybarra and M.G. Velarde). A metric model for thermo-dynamics: uncertainty relations (E.R. Caianiello and C. Noce). Noise and extremum principles in macroscopic nonequilibrium systems (R. Graham). Physics of nonequilibrium systems (G. Nicolis and V. Altares). Sensitivity of nonequilibrium systems to external noise (R. Lefever). Fractals and the theory of phase transitions (H.O. Peitgen and P.H. Richter). Phase-space diffusion in the classical and quantum mechanics of chaotic systems (T. Geisel et al). The future (C. Marchetti). Appendix.