Describes the chaos apparent in simple mechanical systems with the goal of elucidating the connections between classical and quantum mechanics. It develops the relevant ideas of the last two decades via geometric intuition rather than algebraic manipulation. The historical and cultural background against which these scientific developments have occurred is depicted, and realistic examples are discussed in detail. This book enables entry-level graduate students to tackle fresh problems in this rich field.

Inhalt
Contents: Introduction.- The Mechanics of Lagrange.- The Mechanics of Hamilton and Jacobi.- Integrable Systems.- The Three-Body Problem: Moon-Earth-Sun.- Three Methods of Section.- Periodic Orbits.- The Surface of Solution.- Models of the Galaxy and of Small Molecules.- Soft Chaos and the KAM Theorem.- Entropy and Other Measures of Chaos.- The Anisotropic Kepler Problem.- The Transition From Classical to Quantum Mechanics.- The New World of Quantum Mechanics.- The Quantization of Integrable Systems.- Wave Functions in Classically Chaotic Systems.- The Energy Spectrum of a Classically Chaotic System.- The Trace Formula.- The Diamagnetic Kepler Problem.- Motion on a Surface of Constant Negative Curvature.- Scattering Problems, Coding and Multifractal Invariant Measures.- References.- Index.