Homoclinic Chaos in General Relativity

ESTEBAN CALZETTA

Kananaskis

Conferencia; NATO Advanced Research Workshop on D e t e r m i n i s t i c Chaos in General R e l a t i v i t y ,; 1993

NSERC

We give a short review of Homoclinic Chaos, drawing instancesof it from General Relativity, and putting emphasis on the application ofMelnikov's method for the detection of this kind of behavior. We describe insome detail two concrete manifestations of Homoclinic Chaos in relativisticCosmology, one where the Universe may be described as a Hamiltoniandynamical system, and other where this is not possible, due to the presenceof viscous matter. The overall implications of Chaos for Cosmology andGeneral Relativity are discussed.