In the past ten years, there has been much progress in understanding the
global dynamics of systems with several degrees-of-freedom. An important
tool in these studies has been the theory of normally hyperbolic
invariant manifolds and foliations of normally hyperbolic invariant
manifolds. In recent years these techniques have been used for the
development of global perturbation methods, the study of resonance
phenomena in coupled oscillators, geometric singular perturbation
theory, and the study of bursting phenomena in biological oscillators.
"Invariant manifold theorems" have become standard tools for applied
mathematicians, physicists, engineers, and virtually anyone working on
nonlinear problems from a geometric viewpoint. In this book, the author
gives a self-contained development of these ideas as well as proofs of
the main theorems along the lines of the seminal works of Fenichel. In
general, the Fenichel theory is very valuable for many applications, but
it is not easy for people to get into from existing literature. This
book provides an excellent avenue to that. Wiggins also describes a
variety of settings where these techniques can be used in applications.