Editing Orbit (dynamics) (section)

== Stability of orbits ==

A basic classification of orbits is
* constant orbits or fixed points
* periodic orbits
* non-constant and non-periodic orbits

An orbit can fail to be closed in two ways. 
It could be an '''asymptotically periodic''' orbit if it [[limit (mathematics)|converges]] to a periodic orbit.  Such orbits are not closed because they never truly repeat, but they become arbitrarily close to a repeating orbit.
An orbit can also be [[chaos theory|chaotic]].  These orbits come arbitrarily close to the initial point, but fail to ever converge to a periodic orbit.  They exhibit [[sensitive dependence on initial conditions]], meaning that small differences in the initial value will cause large differences in future points of the orbit.

There are other properties of orbits that allow for different classifications.  An orbit can be [[Hyperbolic equilibrium point|hyperbolic]] if nearby points approach or diverge from the orbit exponentially fast.