This book discusses the generalized Duffing equation and its periodic perturbations, with special emphasis on the existence and multiplicity of periodic solutions, subharmonic solutions and different approaches to prove rigorously the presence of chaotic dynamics. Topics in the book are presented at an expository level without entering too much into technical detail. It targets to researchers in the field of chaotic dynamics as well as graduate students with a basic knowledge of topology, analysis, ordinary differential equations and dynamical systems. The book starts with a study of the autonomous equation which represents a simple model of dynamics of a mechanical system with one degree of freedom. This special case has been discussed in the book by using an associated energy function. In the case of a centre, a precise formula is given for the period of the orbit by studying the associated period map.
The book also deals with the problem of existence of periodic solutions for the periodically perturbed equation. An important operator, the Poincare map, is introduced and studied with respect to the existence and multiplicity of its fixed points and periodic points. As a map of the plane into itself, complicated structure and patterns can arise giving numeric evidence of the presence of the so-called chaotic dynamics. Therefore, some novel topological tools are introduced to detect and rigorously prove the existence of periodic solutions as well as analytically prove the existence of chaotic dynamics according to some classical definitions introduced in the last decades. Finally, the rest of the book is devoted to some recent applications in different mathematical models. It carefully describes the technique of "stretching along the paths", which is a very efficient tool to prove rigorously the presence of chaotic dynamics.
