The Noisy Pendulum

Book excerpt: This book contains the general description of the mathematical pendulum subject to constant torque, periodic and random forces. The latter appear in additive and multiplicative form with their possible correlation. For the underdamped pendulum driven by periodic forces, a new phenomenon ? deterministic chaos ? comes into play, and the common action of this chaos and the influence of noise are taken into account. The inverted position of the pendulum can be stabilized either by periodic or random oscillations of the suspension axis or by inserting a spring into a rigid rod, or by their combination. The pendulum is one of the simplest nonlinear models, which has many applications in physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, communications, economics and sociology. A wide group of researchers working in these fields, along with students and teachers, will benefit from this book.