Dynamical manifestations of Hamiltonian monodromy Original Research Article

Monodromy is the simplest obstruction to the existence of global action–angle variables in integrable Hamiltonian dynamical systems. We consider one of the simplest possible systems with monodromy: a particle in a circular box containing a cylindrically symmetric potential-energy barrier. Systems with monodromy have nontrivial smooth connections between their regular Liouville tori. We consider a dynamical connection produced by an appropriate time-dependent perturbation of our system. This turns studying monodromy into studying a physical process. We explain what aspects of this process are to be looked upon in order to uncover the interesting and somewhat unexpected dynamical behavior resulting from the nontrivial properties of the connection. We compute and analyze this behavior.