Two-parameter families of strange attractors

Periodically driven two-dimensional nonlinear oscillators can generate strange attractors that are periodic. These attractors are mapped in a locally 1-1 way to entire families of strange attractors that are indexed by a pair of relatively prime integers (n(1),n(2)), with n(1)>/=1. The integers are introduced by imposing periodic boundary conditions on the entire strange attractor rather than individual trajectories in the attractor. The torsion and energy integrals for members of this two parameter family of locally identical strange attractors depend smoothly on these integers.     

Homoclinic tangency and chaotic attractor disappearance in a dripping faucet experiment

A sequence of attractors, reconstructed from interdrops time series data of a leaky faucet experiment, is analyzed as a function of the mean dripping rate. We established the presence of a saddle point and its manifolds in the attractors and we explained the dynamical changes in the system using the evolution of the manifolds of the saddle point, as suggested by the orbits traced in first return maps. The sequence starts at a fixed point and evolves to an invariant torus of increasing diameter (a Hopf bifurcation) that pushes the unstable manifold towards the stable one. The torus breaks up and the system shows a chaotic attractor bounded by the unstable manifold of the saddle. With the attractor expansion the unstable manifold becomes tangential to the stable one, giving rise to the sudden disappearance of the chaotic attractor, which is an experimental observation of a so called chaotic blue sky catastrophe.     

Structure and evolution of strange attractors in non-elastic triangular billiards

We study non-elastic billiard dynamics in an equilateral triangular table. In such dynamics, collisions with the walls of the table are not elastic, as in standard billiards; rather, the outgoing angle of the trajectory with the normal vector to the boundary at the point of collision is a uniform factor λ < 1 smaller than the incoming angle. This leads to contraction in phase space for the discrete-time dynamics between consecutive collisions, and hence to attractors of zero Lebesgue measure, which are almost always fractal strange attractors with chaotic dynamics, due to the presence of an expansion mechanism. We study the structure of these strange attractors and their evolution as the contraction parameter λ is varied. For λ∈(0,1/3), we prove rigorously that the attractor has the structure of a Cantor set times an interval, whereas for larger values of λ gaps arise in the Cantor structure. For λ close to 1, the attractor splits into three transitive components, whose basins of attraction have fractal boundaries.     

Stalactite basin structure of dynamical systems with transient chaos in an invariant manifold

Dynamical systems with invariant manifolds occur in a variety of situations (e.g., identical coupled oscillators, and systems with a symmetry). We consider the case where there is both a nonchaotic attractor (e.g., a periodic orbit) and a nonattracting chaotic set (or chaotic repeller) in the invariant manifold. We consider the character of the basins for the attracting nonchaotic set in the invariant manifold and another attractor not in the invariant manifold. It is found that the boundary separating these basins has an interesting structure: The basin of the attractor not in the invariant manifold is characterized by thin cusp shaped regions ("stalactites") extending down to touch the nonattracting chaotic set in the invariant manifold. We also develop theoretical scalings applicable to these systems, and compare with numerical experiments. (c) 2000 American Institute of Physics.     

Noise can reduce disorder in chaotic dynamics

We evoke the idea of representation of the chaotic attractor by the set of unstable periodic orbits and disclose a novel noise-induced ordering phenomenon. For long unstable periodic orbits forming the strange attractor the weights (or natural measure) is generally highly inhomogeneous over the set, either diminishing or enhancing the contribution of these orbits into system dynamics. We show analytically and numerically a weak noise to reduce this inhomogeneity and, additionally to obvious perturbing impact, make a regularizing influence on the chaotic dynamics. This universal effect is rooted into the nature of deterministic chaos.     

Cycling chaotic attractors in two models for dynamics with invariant subspaces

Nonergodic attractors can robustly appear in symmetric systems as structurally stable cycles between saddle-type invariant sets. These saddles may be chaotic giving rise to "cycling chaos." The robustness of such attractors appears by virtue of the fact that the connections are robust within some invariant subspace. We consider two previously studied examples and examine these in detail for a number of effects: (i) presence of internal symmetries within the chaotic saddles, (ii) phase-resetting, where only a limited set of connecting trajectories between saddles are possible, and (iii) multistability of periodic orbits near bifurcation to cycling attractors. The first model consists of three cyclically coupled Lorenz equations and was investigated first by Dellnitz et al. [Int. J. Bifurcation Chaos Appl. Sci. Eng. 5, 1243-1247 (1995)]. We show that one can find a "false phase-resetting" effect here due to the presence of a skew product structure for the dynamics in an invariant subspace; we verify this by considering a more general bi-directional coupling. The presence of internal symmetries of the chaotic saddles means that the set of connections can never be clean in this system, that is, there will always be transversely repelling orbits within the saddles that are transversely attracting on average. Nonetheless we argue that "anomalous connections" are rare. The second model we consider is an approximate return mapping near the stable manifold of a saddle in a cycling attractor from a magnetoconvection problem previously investigated by two of the authors. Near resonance, we show that the model genuinely is phase-resetting, and there are indeed stable periodic orbits of arbitrarily long period close to resonance, as previously conjectured. We examine the set of nearby periodic orbits in both parameter and phase space and show that their structure appears to be much more complicated than previously suspected. In particular, the basins of attraction of the periodic orbits appear to be pseudo-riddled in the terminology of Lai [Physica D 150, 1-13 (2001)].     

A special type of attractor and transitions in a delayed system

We discuss strange nonchaotic attractors (SNAs) in addition to chaotic and regular attractors in a quasiperiodically driven system with time delays. A route and the associated mechanism are described for a special type of attractor called strange-nonchaotic-attractor-like (SNA-like) through T² torus bifurcation. The type of attractor can be observed in large parameter domains and it is easily mistaken for a true SNA judging merely from the phase portrait, power spectrum and the largest Lyapunov exponent. SNA-like attractor is not strange and has no phase sensitivity. Conditions for Neimark-Sacker bifurcation are obtained by theoretical analysis for the unforced system. Complicated and interesting dynamical transitions are investigated among the different tongues.     

Boundary crisis and transient in a dissipative relativistic standard map

Some dynamical properties for a problem concerning the acceleration of particles in a wave packet are studied. The model is described in terms of a two-dimensional nonlinear map obtained from a Hamiltonian which describes the motion of a relativistic standard map. The phase space is mixed in the sense that there are regular and chaotic regions coexisting. When dissipation is introduced, the property of area preservation is broken and attractors emerge. We have shown that a tiny increase of the dissipation causes a change in the phase space. A chaotic attractor as well as its basin of attraction are destroyed thereby leading the system to experience a boundary crisis. We have characterized such a boundary crisis via a collision of the chaotic attractor with the stable manifold of a saddle fixed point. Once the chaotic attractor is destroyed, a chaotic transient described by a power law with exponent −1 is observed.     

A dynamical system with a strange attractor and invariant tori

This paper describes a simple three-dimensional time-reversible system of ODEs with quadratic nonlinearities and the unusual property that it is exhibits conservative behavior for some initial conditions and dissipative behavior for others. The conservative regime has quasi-periodic orbits whose amplitude depend on the initial conditions, while the dissipative regime is chaotic. Thus a strange attractor coexists with an infinite set of nested invariant tori in the state space.     

Strange nonchaotic attractors in Harper maps

We study the existence of strange nonchaotic attractors (SNA) in the family of Harper maps. We prove that for a set of parameters of positive measure, the map possesses a SNA. However, the set is nowhere dense. By changing the parameter arbitrarily small amounts, the attractor is a smooth curve and not a SNA.     

Chaotic Phenomena in a Two-Photon Laser with Injected Signal

The instability and the chaotic phenomena in a two-photon laser with injected signal are discussed for the homogeneously broadened single mode ring cavity. The structure of the system's attractors is considered by using the Lyapunov exponents and the Lyapunov dimension. The strange attractors of chaos and superchaos are found. The strange attractor displaying superchaos is not observed in one-photon laser with injected signal.     

Attractors of a duffing equation-dependence on the exciting frequency

Attractors of a special Duffing equation are presented. The paper includes both strange attractors and periodic attractors. Emphasis is placed upon the evolution of an attractor starting from a very simple “thin” shape to a growing complex structure. It is shown that such an evolution is controlled by the exciting frequency. Further, the results indicate for this Duffing equation that complicated strange attractors are related to simple bifurcation behavior and vice versa.     

Double Poincaré sections of a quasi-periodically forced,chaotic attractor

A nonlinear mechanical oscillator is forced with two incommensurate harmonic signals and chaotic vibrations are experimentally observed. The fractal nature of this strange attractor in four-dimensional phase space is revealed by using a double Poincaré section. This section involves a narrow timing pulse on one harmonic driving signal and a wider phase window on the other forcing harmonic signal. The resulting two-dimensional map shows a Cantor set structure characteristic of strange attractors. The transition from quasi-periodic to chaotic vibrations is also observed.     

A new 5D hyperchaotic system with stable equilibrium point,transient chaotic behaviour and its fractional-order form

In this paper, we construct a novel 4D autonomous chaotic system with four cross-product nonlinear terms and five equilibria. The multiple coexisting attractors and the multiscroll attractor of the system are numerically investigated. Research results show that the system has various types of multiple attractors, including three strange attractors with a limit cycle, three limit cycles, two strange attractors with a pair of limit cycles, two coexisting strange attractors. By using the passive control theory, a controller is designed for controlling the chaos of the system. Both analytical and numerical studies verify that the designed controller can suppress chaotic motion and stabilise the system at the origin. Moreover, an electronic circuit is presented for implementing the chaotic system.     

Fractal dimension of steady nonequilibrium flows

The Kaplan-Yorke information dimension of phase-space attractors for two kinds of steady nonequilibrium many-body flows is evaluated. In both cases a set of Newtonian particles is considered which interacts with boundary particles. Time-averaged boundary temperatures are imposed by Nose-Hoover thermostat forces. For both kinds of nonequilibrium systems, it is demonstrated numerically that external isothermal boundaries can drive the otherwise purely Newtonian flow onto a multifractal attractor with a phase-space information dimension significantly less than that of the corresponding equilibrium flow. Thus the Gibbs' entropy of such nonequilibrium flows can diverge.     

Basins of periodic orbits for elliptic maps of the torus

The behavior of basins of periodic orbits, for families of elliptic maps in the 2D torus depending on a parameter, is studied. We give an explicit formula for periodic orbits (i.e., central points of basins), considering also the occurrence of singular situations. Such a formula describes the evolution of basins, showing that onset and disappearance of periodic orbits cannot be reduced to a simple bifurcation scheme. Also, the stochastic features of the strange attractor at the border of ellipticity may be related to the dynamics of collapsing basins.     

Fluctuational transitions through a fractal basin boundary

Fluctuational transitions between two coexisting chaotic attractors, separated by a fractal basin boundary, are studied in a discrete dynamical system. It is shown that the transition mechanism is determined by a hierarchy of homoclinic points. The most probable escape path from a chaotic attractor to the fractal boundary is found using both statistical analyses of fluctuational trajectories and the Hamiltonian theory of fluctuations.     

Dynamic analysis and synchronization control of an unusual chaotic system with exponential term and coexisting attractors

This paper reports a new four-dimensional chaotic system consisting of an exponential nonlinear term, two quadratic nonlinear terms and five linear terms. The system has only one equilibrium and performs stability, periodicity and chaos with the variation of the parameters. It losses its stability with the occurrence of Hopf bifurcation and goes into chaos via period-doubling bifurcation. One more interesting feature of the system is that it can generate multiple coexisting attractors for different initial conditions, such as two strange attractors with one limit cycle, one strange attractor with two limit cycles, etc. The dynamic properties of the system are presented by numerical simulation includes bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponent spectrum and phase portraits. An electronic circuit is constructed to implement the chaotic attractor of the system. Based on the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) method, the synchronization control of the system is investigated.