Painleve analysis of the perturbed sine-Gordon equation

We are reporting on numerical investigations of a seven-variable model corresponding to a class of chemical reactions which exhibit, as a function of the control parameter, a sequence of periodic and chaotic states strikingly similar to that observed in bench experiments. This scenario involves period-doubling cascades, tangent bifurcations and intermittency, in good agreement with a dynamical evolution predicted by a multi-humped one-dimensional map. This strongly suggests an interpretation of the strange-attractor-like behavior observed along such paths, in terms of the chaotic behavior which occurs nearby homoclinic conditions.