Behavior of orbits of two coupled oscillators

There has been very considerable progress in the past few years on the theory of two conservative, coupled, nonlinear oscillators. This is a very general theory, and applies to many equivalent systems. A typical problem of this class has a solution that is so complicated that it is impossible to find an expression for the state of the system that is valid for all time. However, recent results are making it possible to determine the next most useful type of information. This is the asymptotic behavior of individual orbits in the limit of very long times. It is just the information that is desired in many situations. For example, it determines the stability of the motion. The key to our present understanding is renormalization. The present state of the art has been described in Robert MacKay's thesis, for which this is an advertisement