SALI: An Efficient Indicator of Chaos with Application to 2 and 3 Degrees of Freedom Hamiltonian Systems

The Smaller Alignment Index (SALI) is a very useful and efficient indicator that can distinguish rapidly and with certainty between ordered and chaotic motion in Hamiltonian systems. This is based on the different behavior of the SALI in the two cases, as it fluctuates around non-zero values for ordered orbits and converges exponentially to zero for chaotic orbits. In this paper we present a detailed numerical study, comparing the advantages of the SALI to those of the Maximal Lyapunov Exponent (MLE), which is the traditional indicator of chaos detection in dynamical systems. Exploiting these advantages, we demonstrate how the SALI can be used to identify even tiny regions of order and chaos in Hamiltonian systems of 2 and 3 degrees of freedom.