Showcase of Blue Sky Catastrophes

Abstract

Let a system of differential equations possess a saddle-node periodic orbit such that every orbit in its unstable manifold is homoclinic, i.e. the unstable manifold is a subset of the (global) stable manifold. We study several bifurcation cases where the splitting of such a homoclinic connection causes the Blue Sky Catastrophe, including the onset of complex dynamics. The birth of an invariant torus or a Klein bottle is also described.