Claudio Bonanno

Gravity field and rotation state of Mercury from the BepiColombo Radio Science Experiments

Abstract The ESA mission BepiColombo will include a Mercury Planetary Orbiter equipped with a full complement of instruments to perform Radio Science Experiments. Very precise range and range-rate tracking from Earth, on-board accelerometry, altimetry and accurate angular measurements with optical instruments will provide large data sets. From these it will be possible to study (1) the global gravity field of Mercury and its temporal variations due to tides, (2) the medium to short scale (down do 300≃400 km ) gravity anomalies, (3) the rotation state of the planet, in particular the obliquity and the libration with respect to the 3/2 spin orbit resonance and (4) the orbit of the center of mass of the planet. With the global gravity field and the rotation state it is possible to tightly constrain the internal structure of the planet, in particular to determine whether the solid surface of the planet is decoupled from the inner core by some liquid layer, as postulated by dynamo theories of Mercurys magnetic field. With the gravity anomalies and altimetry it is possible to study the geophysics of the planets crust, mantle and impact basins. With the orbit of the planet closest to the Sun it is possible to constrain relativistic theories of gravitation. The possibility of achieving these scientific goals has been tested with a full cycle numerical simulation of the Radio Science Experiments. It includes the generation of simulated tracking and accelerometer data, and the determination, by least squares fit, of a long list of variables including the initial conditions for each observed arc, calibration parameters, gravity field harmonic coefficients, and corrections to the orbit of Mercury. An error budget has been deduced both from the formal covariance matrices and from the actual difference between the nominal values used in the data simulation and the solution. Thus the most complete error budget contains the effect of systematic measurement errors and is by far more reliable than a formal one. For the rotation experiment an error budget has been computed on the basis of dedicated studies on each separate error source. The results of the full cycle simulation are positive, that is the experiments are feasible at the required level of accuracy. However, the extraction of the full accuracy results from the data will be by no means trivial, and there are a number of open problems, both in the data processing (e.g., the selection of the orbital arc length) and in the mission scheduling (e.g., the selection of the target areas for the rotation experiment).

Recurrence and algorithmic information

In this paper, we initiate a somewhat detailed investigation of the relationships between quantitative recurrence indicators and algorithmic complexity of orbits in weakly chaotic dynamical systems. We mainly focus on examples.

Solitons for the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation

Abstract In this paper we study existence and orbital stability for solitary waves of the nonlinear Klein-Gordon equation. The energy of these solutions travels as a localized packet, hence they are a particular type of solitons. In particular we are interested in sufficient conditions on the potential for the existence of solitons. Our proof is based on the study of the ratio energy/charge of a function, which turns out to be a useful approach for many field equations.

Spectral analysis of transfer operators associated to Farey fractions

The spectrum of a one-parameter family of signed transfer operators associated to the Farey map is studied in detail. We show that when acting on a suitable Hilbert space of analytic functions they are selfadjoint and exhibit absolutely continuous spectrum and no non-zero point spectrum. Polynomial eigenfunctions when the parameter is a negative half-integer are also discussed.

Symmetries and Rank Deficiency in the Orbit Determination Around Another Planet

We study the possible degeneracies for the normal matrix of the observations from the Earth of the motion of a satellite around a planet, and give the possible solutions to the loss of precision in the orbit determination caused by the rank deficiency. Finally we discuss the methods available to control the instability in the orbit determination resulting from the degeneracy.

Solitary waves and vortices in non-Abelian gauge theories with matter

Abstract We consider a non-Abelian gauge theory in ℝ4 equipped with the Minkowski metric, which provides a model for the interaction between a bosonic matter field and a gauge field with gauge group S U(2). We prove the existence of solitary waves which are related to those found for the Klein-Gordon-Maxwell equations.

Solitons in gauge theories: Existence and dependence on the charge

Abstract In this paper we review recent results on the existence of non-topological solitons in classical relativistic nonlinear field theories. We follow the Coleman approach, which is based on the existence of two conservation laws, energy and charge. In particular we show that under mild assumptions on the nonlinear term it is possible to prove the existence of solitons for a set of admissible charges. This set has been studied for the nonlinear Klein–Gordon equation, and in this paper we state new results in this direction for the Klein–Gordon–Maxwell system.

Toward a dynamical model for prime numbers

Abstract We show one possible dynamical approach to the study of the distribution of prime numbers. Our approach is based on two complexity methods, the computable information content and the entropy information gain, looking for analogies between the prime numbers and intermittency.

Algorithmic information for interval maps with an indifferent fixed point and infinite invariant measure

Measuring the average information that is necessary to describe the behavior of a dynamical system leads to a generalization of the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy. This is particularly interesting when the system has null entropy and the information increases less than linearly with respect to time. We consider a class of maps of the interval with an indifferent fixed point at the origin and an infinite natural invariant measure. We show that the average information that is necessary to describe the behavior of the orbits increases with time n approximately as nalpha, where alpha < 1 depends only on the asymptotic behavior of the map near the origin.

Complexity for Extended Dynamical Systems

We consider dynamical systems for which the spatial extension plays an important role. For these systems, the notions of attractor, ϵ-entropy and topological entropy per unit time and volume have been introduced previously. In this paper we use the notion of Kolmogorov complexity to introduce, for extended dynamical systems, a notion of complexity per unit time and volume which plays the same role as the metric entropy for classical dynamical systems. We introduce this notion as an almost sure limit on orbits of the system. Moreover we prove a kind of variational principle for this complexity.