Abundance of Observable Lyapunov Irregular Sets

Abstract

Lyapunov exponent is widely used in natural science to find chaotic signal, but its existence is seldom discussed. In the present paper, we consider the problem of whether the set of points at which Lyapunov exponent fails to exist, called the Lyapunov irregular set, has positive Lebesgue measure. The only known example with the Lyapunov irregular set of positive Lebesgue measure is a figure-8 attractor by the work of Ott and Yorke (Phys Rev 78, 056203, 2008), whose key mechanism (homoclinic loop) is easy to be broken by small perturbations. In this paper, we show that surface diffeomorphisms with a robust homoclinic tangency given by Colli and Vargas (Ergod Theory Dyn Syst 21, 1657–1681, 2001), as well as other several known nonhyperbolic dynamics, have the Lyapunov irregular set of positive Lebesgue measure. We can construct such positive Lebesgue measure sets both as the time averages exist and do not exist on it.