Perturbation methods and closure approximations in nonlinear systems

In the first section of this thesis, Hamiltonian theories of guiding center and gyro-center motion are developed using modern symplectic methods and Lie transformations. Littlejohn's techniques, combined with the theory of resonant interaction and island overlap, are used to explore the problem of adiabatic invariance and onset of stochasticity. As an example, the breakdown of invariance due to resonance between drift motion and gyromotion in a tokamak is considered. A Hamiltonian is developed for motion in a straight magnetic field with electrostatic perturbations in the gyrokinetic ordering, from which nonlinear gyrokinetic equations are constructed which have the property of phase-space preservation, useful for computer simulation. Energy invariants are found and various limits of the equations are considered. In the second section, statistical closure theories are applied to simple dynamical systems. The logistic map is used as an example because of its universal properties and simple quadratic nonlinearity. The first closure considered is the direct interaction approximation of Kraichnan, which is found to fail when applied to the logistic map because it cannot approximate the bounded support of the map's equilibrium distribution. By imposing a periodically constraint on a Langevin form of the DIA a new stable closure is developed