Adiabatic chaos in a two-dimensional mapping

A close to identity symplectic mapping describing the dynamics of a charged particle in the field of an infinitely wide packet of electrostatic waves is studied. A region of chaotic dynamics, whose width is large for an arbitrarily small deviation of the mapping from the identity, exists on the phase cylinder. This is explained by the quasirandom change occurring in an adiabatic invariant of the problem when the phase trajectory crosses a resonance curve. An asymptotic formula is derived for the jump in the adiabatic invariant. The width of the chaos region and the density of the set of invariant curves near the boundary of the chaos region are estimated. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.