Abstract
The motion of an elastic pendulum with two degrees of freedom has been investigated in the vicinity of a separatrix, using the Liouville equation. Even for this simple system, an irreversible kinetic equation of the Fokker-Plank type for the momentum-distribution function has been obtained in the limit of a stiff pendulum. This equation describes a monotonic approach to the "microcanonical equilibrium state" for a given energy surface. The diffusion coefficient for the energy of the unperturbed pendulum in this work is directly related to that obtained by Chirikov's heuristic argument.

This publication has 13 references indexed in Scilit: