Martin Johnston

I am fascinated by the search for order in disorder, is chaos just a random state or is there an underlying structure just lurking in the shadows? My research centers on the search for invariant structures in chaotic systems. The nonlinear systems that I study are governed by classical mechanics but produce very complicated behaviors and when studied in the time-domain they tend to exhibit behavior that is very difficult to characterize. Even using tools such as spectral analysis does not lead to a very clear understanding of the system dynamics. Other tools such as Poincare diagrams, Lyapunov exponents and fractal dimensions give hints to structures that are missing in the conventional view but there is still a long way to go.