Author: Robert Q. Topper, Department of Chemistry, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, Albert Nerken School of Engineering, 51 Astor Place, New York NY 10003
This chapter reviews some of the formal and computational methods that have evolved from the theory of nonlinear dynamical systems (sometimes loosely referred to as ``chaos theory'') for visualizing global trands in reaction dynamics. These methods have provided new and interesting predictions about the details of pre-and postreactive molecular motions. Much of the focus of the work has been to emphasize the roles played by certain ``phase-space structures'' which can act as bottlenecks to intramolecular energy transfer or as mediators of reaction dynamics. These structures have been given a variety of exotic names, including ``reactive islands,'' ``turnstiles,'' ``cantori,'' ``vague tori,'' and ``cylindrical manifolds.'' Their properties have helped to provide a framework for visualizing nonstatistical effects in reaction dynamics and molecular dynamics simulations.
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