Time-Reversible Ergodic Maps and the 2015 Ian Snook Prize

Abstract

The time reversibility characteristic of Hamiltonian mechanics has long been extended to nonHamiltonian dynamical systems modeling nonequilibrium steady states with feedback-based thermostats and ergostats. Typical solutions are multifractal attractor-repellor phase-space pairs with reversed momenta and unchanged coordinates, $(q,p)⟷(q,-p)$ . Weak control of the temperature, $\propto p^2$ and its fluctuation, resulting in ergodicity, has recently been achieved in a three-dimensional time-reversible model of a heat-conducting harmonic oscillator. Two-dimensional cross sections of such nonequilibrium flows can be generated with time-reversible dissipative maps yielding æsthetically interesting attractor-repellor pairs. We challenge the reader to find and explore such time-reversible dissipative maps. This challenge is the 2015 Snook-Prize Problem.

9 pages with three figures, to appear in Computational Methods in Science and Technology