View source for Talk:Nontwist maps

This is a good review of Nontwist maps, but needs some revisions.  First, there are many too many references!  Scholarpedia guidelines
specify keeping them to a MINIMUM.  Second, the material on Tokamaks is inappropriately detailed; there are many textbooks.  I corrected a few obvious typos,

Allow me to quote: 
    "Keep references to the minimum, citing only major books and review articles. At the end of the article put "Suggested Reading" list pointing to recent books."  The fact that this requirement has been violated is no reason to repeat the injury to scholarpedia standards.

Please reduce the number of references.  You can write a full review article for another journal.

There is no discussion of vortex pairs, one of the unique indicators of a nontwist system.  This can be done qualitatively, as in my own
review article in the Encyclopedia of Nonlinear Science.

The article gives the impression that nontwist is limited to 2D systems.  Not so.  4D systems have been discussed rather nicely by Dullin and Meiss,
In fact I recently learned of earlier work by Laskar for accelerators where the frequency map is shown to have a fold.
One of the aims of Scholarpedia is to provide up to date information on current research, and 4D systems is one of these.

If you can find a good reference for tokamaks, please give it, but this is not an essential point.  But you could use the space for 4D systems.
Or for vortex pairs.

== Author Wurm :  ==

We thank reviewer C for the corrections of the typos and the additional reference, which we have included.


The reviewer is correct in stating that the Scholarpedia guidelines suggest minimizing references. During the writing of the article, we were well aware of this guideline, but we observed that it is not strictly enforced (e.g.  the "Chirikov standard map"  section has numerous references)  and felt it necessary to include  references for the following reasons:

 
1. There has been a great deal of rediscovery in the area of nontwist maps, with different terminology,  the same effects going by different names, etc.  Many researchers appear to be unaware of all the work that has been done.  So,  one of our goals with this article was to make this clear and to identify and give credit  to the references that made original and important contributions.

2. Nontwist maps, like the standard map,  arise in many different physical contexts.  We aimed to show this  wide range of applications.  For this reason, we  tried to list the first occurrence of nontwist maps in each field of application. (incidentally, for this reason we have included and are  especially appreciative of the additional reference (of which we were not previously aware) that the referee has provided).     Although the list of papers is long, it is far from exhaustive. Many papers have been published based on the original  works in the different fields.

3.  The area  of nontwist maps is still relatively young and the main results cannot be found in a book or in a review article. In most cases, the only reference is to the original research paper, so anybody reading the article who is interested in pursuing this topic  further will need to start with these papers.

 
Regarding, the tokamak description, we tried to give the bare minimum of information  so that somebody who does not know anything about nuclear fusion would get a sense of what this application was about. If reviewer C feels strongly about shortening the description, we can do that and add a general tokamak reference.


=====================Reviewer A==============================

I suggest some revisions.

1)  Instead of the text:

"Apart from their physical importance, nontwist maps are of mathematical 
interest because standard proofs of important theorems
concerning area-preserving maps assume the twist condition, 
e.g., the Poincare-Birkhoff theorem, the KAM theorem, and Aubry-Mather theory;"

that sounds incomplete, I suggest the following one:

"Apart from their physical importance, nontwist maps are of mathematical
 interest because they do not satisfy the basic assumptions of the celebrated 
 Poincar\'{e}-Birkhoff theorem, the KAM theorem, and Aubry-Mather theory,
 and thus new results concerning their typical behaviour have to be derived;"

2) The definition of SNM is incomplete:  it is not explained  what <math> \mathbb{T}</math> means,
and  on the line of definition of <math> x_{i+1}</math>,  (modulo 1) is missing.
 I suggest to define the map, not through a recurrence relation, but specifying its classical definition:

 It is defined by 
<math >(x,y)\in \mathbb{T}\times\mathbb{R}\to(\overline{x},\overline{y})\in\mathbb{T}\times\mathbb{R},</math>
where 

<math stnt>
\begin{array}{lcl}
\overline{x} & = & x + a \left( 1-\overline{y}^2\right),\quad ({\rm modulo}  1)\\
\overline{y} & = & y -b \sin\left(2\pi x\right)
\end{array}
</math>


3) In the definition of a nontwist map, I suggest to replace the twist condition, with the nontwist one.
In my opinion, the reader could understand better what the nontwist means from this condition:
<math nontwist>
\frac{\partial \overline{x}\left(x,y\right)}{\partial y}=0
</math> 

3) I suggest to include in the text the remark that you refer only to rotational periodic orbits and invariant circles.

4) An invariant circle of both twist and nontwist maps contains more than one "irrational orbit", hence the text 
below:

"One of the main characteristics of nontwist maps is that more than
one irrational orbit (and more than one chain of periodic orbits of
the same winding number) can exist."

 must be changed. I suggest to include instead, the following lines:

"One of the main characteristics of nontwist maps, in comparison to twist maps, is that more than one
 rotational invariant circle, and more than one rotational chain
of periodic orbits, of the same winding  number, can exist". 

7) The same objection, relative to the text:

"When two quasiperiodic orbits collide, the winding
number profile shows a local extremum (Fig.<ref>F2</ref>) and the orbit at
collision is referred to as the ''shearless curve'' or '' shearless invariant torus''."

I suggest instead, the following lines:

"Computer experiments revealed that when two rotational invariant circles of the same 
rotation number collide, the winding number profile exhibits
a local extremum point  (Fig.<ref>F2</ref>), and the resulting invariant set at 
collision is referred to as the  '' shearless invariant torus''  or twistless circle ( Dullin et al., 2000)."
 
For a more theoretical definition of the twistless circle, see Dullin's paper.

8) In the text below: 

 "Under suitable changes of parameter values,  periodic orbits of the
same winding number approach each other in coordinate space."

I suggest to insert "phase space", instead of "coordinate space".

9)  The phrase  "Prior
to collision, the orbits interact through chaotic  layer
reconnection ("separatrix" reconnection)" can be misleading, inducing 
the idea that rotational periodic orbits of the same period, always can reach the collision threshold,
while  for some regions   in the parameter space  there exist  twin chains of odd periodic orbits that reconnect,
but they never collide  (as you revealed in your papers).


10) "The hyperbolic manifolds of the orbits connect" is inappropriate. In differential geometry, a
 hyperbolic manifold is a special Riemannian manifold, and at a moment Scholarpedia
 will provide a link to that notion. I suggest to say: "At a threshold the invariant
 manifolds of distinct hyperbolic  periodic orbits, of the same period, intersect each other".


== Author Wurm :  ==

We thank Reviewer A for her detailed comments, believe her suggests
improve the article,  and have implemented
all  of them except for a slight wording change for #1 and #7
(reviewer A's numbering) and


Number 3 (1st)   We feel that the suggested definition is not adequate. To
be generically nontwist, there has to be a traversal of zero. The
suggested definition allows  for a tangency, which is violates the twist
condition but is not generic.

Number 3(2nd)   Instead of adding a sentence we added the word "rotational"
a few times in the text to indicate that these are the only orbits we are
talking about.




====================Reviewer A===================================

1) For:
"Generically, nontwist regions have been shown to appear in area-preserving maps that have a tripling bifurcation of an elliptic fixed point.(van der Wheele et al., 1988; Moeckel, 1990; Dullin et al., 2000)"

I suggest:

"Generically, nontwist regions have been shown to appear in a neighbourhood of an elliptic fixed point of an area preserving map,
undergoing a tripling bifurcation (van der Wheele et al., 1988; Moeckel, 1990; Dullin et al., 2000)"


2) The text "where <math>c</math> is a positive real number," after the twist condition can be removed.


3)  I think that it is sufficient to say "A "nontwist" map violates the twist condition
locally in a generic way, with a simple traversal of zero. 

4)  The line "One consequence of the violation of the twist condition is the existence of multiple periodic orbits with the same winding number"
is not quite appropriate, because even twist maps can have two distinct periodic orbits of the same period, one of negative residue and the second 
of pozitive residue.

5) The following phrase  "A nonexhaustive  selection of references
is provide here to provide an entry-way into the literature". 

repeats "provide". 
I propose:
"A nonexhaustive  selection of references
is  given here to provide an entry-way into the literature."

6) I suggest to introduce a reference to the rotation number definition, inside the text:

"One of the main characteristics of nontwist maps, in comparison to twist maps, is that more than
one rotational invariant circle, and more than one rotational chain of periodic orbits of the same winding number ([[Rotation_theory|rotation number]]) can exist". 


7) I suggest to replace the lines: "In the standard nontwist map of Eq.(<ref>stnt</ref>) this can be seen  easily in the integrable
case where <math>b=0</math>: two  orbits with winding number <math>\omega</math> are located
at
:<math integrable-po>
 (x,y) = \left( x,\pm\sqrt{1-\omega/a}\right) \,,
 </math>
i.e., two such orbits are found on any vertical line in phase space. For ,<math>b \neq 0</math>, even more than two rotational orbits with the same winding number may exist."

with

"In the integrable standard nontwist map (the map  Eq.(<ref>stnt</ref>) corresponding to b=0), for example,
the invariant circles <math> y=y_0 </math>, <math> y=-y_0 </math>, <math> y_0\in\mathbb{R} </math>,
have the same rotation number <math> \rho(y_0)=a(1-y_0^2)</math>."


8) I suggest to replace the remark: "(In the integrable case, the point of collision occurs at
<math>a=\omega</math>)" 
with the following one:

"(In the integrable case, two invariant circles of rotation number <math>\rho<a</math> approach each other as <math>  a </math> decreases and collide at <math> a=\rho </math>)"

9) The caption of the figure 1 "Example of the (''x'',''y'')-space for standard nontwist map
at at ''a'' = 0.615,''b'' = 0.4."

is, in my opinion, more appropriate  in the form:

"The phase portrait of the standard nontwist map
corresponding to  ''a'' = 0.615, ''b'' = 0.4."
====================Reviewer A=============================

I made a minor modification: within "in the neighbourhood" I inserted "a": "in a neighbourhood".