Floquet-like theory and gauge transformations for general smooth dynamical systems

Abstract

The classical Floquet theory allows to map a time-periodic system of linear differential equations into an autonomous one. By looking at it in a geometrical way, we extend the theory to a class of non-autonomous non-periodic equations. This is obtained by considering a change of variables which depends on time in a non-trivial way, i.e. introducing gauge transformations, well known in fundamental Physics and Field Theory -- but which seems to have received little attention in this context.

V2: minor misprints corrected, examples added V3: published version