Normal stability of slow manifolds in nearly-periodic Hamiltonian systems

Abstract

M. Kruskal showed that each nearly-periodic dynamical system admits a formal U (1) symmetry, generated by the so-called roto-rate. We prove that such systems also admit nearly-invariant manifolds of each order, near which rapid oscillations are suppressed. We study the nonlinear normal stability of these slow manifolds for nearlyperiodic Hamiltonian systems on barely symplectic manifolds -manifolds equipped with closed, non-degenerate 2-forms that may be degenerate to leading order. In particular, we establish a sufficient condition for long-term normal stability based on second derivatives of the well-known adiabatic invariant. We use these results to investigate the problem of embedding guiding center dynamics of a magnetized charged particle as a slow manifold in a nearly-periodic system. We prove that one previous embedding, and two new embeddings enjoy long-term normal stability, and thereby strengthen the theoretical justification for these models.