Bifurcations and dynamical evolution of eigenvalues of Hamiltonian systems

The transient behavior of the eigenvalues of a state transition matrix in a Hamiltonian system is investigated. Mathematical tools are developed to derive the necessary and sufficient conditions for bifurcations of eigenvalues off and onto the unit circle. The transient behavior of eigenvalues is quantified and the mechanism by which instability transitions occur is identified. This work can be seen as a generalization of the Krein Signature.