After a short introduction to the fundamentals, this book provides a
detailed account of major advances in applying fractional calculus to
dynamical systems. Fractional order dynamical systems currently continue
to gain further importance in many areas of science and engineering.
As with many other approaches to mathematical modeling, the first issue
to be addressed is the need to couple a definition of the fractional
differentiation or integration operator with the types of dynamical
systems that are analyzed. As such, for the fundamentals the focus is on
basic aspects of fractional calculus, in particular stability analysis,
which is required to tackle synchronization in coupled fractional order
systems, to understand the essence of estimators for related integer
order systems, and to keep track of the interplay between
synchronization and parameter observation. This serves as the common
basis for the more advanced topics and applications presented in the
subsequent chapters, which include an introduction to the 'Immersion and
Invariance' (I&I) methodology, the masterslave synchronization scheme
for partially known nonlinear fractional order systems, Fractional
Algebraic Observability (FAO) and Fractional Generalized
quasi-Synchronization (FGqS) to name but a few.
This book is intended not only for applied mathematicians and
theoretical physicists, but also for anyone in applied science dealing
with complex nonlinear systems.