Characterization of blowout bifurcation by unstable periodic orbits

Abstract

Blowout bifurcation in chaotic dynamical systems occurs when a chaotic attractor, lying in some invariant subspace, becomes transversely unstable. We establish quantitative characterization of the blowout bifurcation by unstable periodic orbits embedded in the chaotic attractor. We argue that the bifurcation is mediated by changes in the transverse stability of an infinite number of unstable periodic orbits . There are two distinct groups of periodic orbits: one transversely stable and another transversely unstable. The bifurcation occurs when some properly weighted transverse eigenvalues of these two groups are balanced. @S1063-651X~97!50902-0# PACS number~s!: 05.45.1b Recently, a novel type of bifurcation has been discovered in chaotic dynamical systems @1,2#. This is the so-called ‘‘blowout bifurcation’’ that occurs in dynamical systems with a symmetric invariant subspace. Let S be the invariant subspace in which there is a chaotic attractor. Since S is invariant, initial conditions in S result in trajectories that remain in S forever. Whether the chaotic attractor in S is also an attractor in the full phase space depends on the sign of the largest Lyapunov exponent L’ computed for trajectories in S with respect to perturbations in the subspace T which is transverse to S. When L’ is negative, S attracts trajectories transversely in the vicinity of S and, hence, the chaotic attractor in S is an attractor in the full phase space. If L’ is positive, trajectories in the neighborhood of S are repelled away from it and, consequently, the attractor in S is transversely unstable and it is hence not an attractor in the full phase space. Blowout bifurcation occurs when L’ changes from negative to positive values. There are distinct physical phenomena associated with the blowout bifurcation. For example, near the bifurcation point where L ’ is negative, if there are other attractors in the phase space, then typically, the basin of the chaotic attractor in S is riddled @3#. When L ’ is slightly positive, if there are no other attractors in the phase space, the dynamics in the transverse subspace T exhibits an extreme type of temporally intermittent bursting behavior, the on-off intermittency @4,5#. Recent study has also revealed that blowout bifurcation can lead to symmetry breaking in chaotic systems @6#. In the study of chaos theory, it is important to be able to understand a bifurcation in terms of unstable periodic orbits of the system because the knowledge of periodic orbits usually yields a great deal of information about the dynamics @7‐9#. Periodic orbits are known to be responsible for many different types of bifurcations in chaotic systems. For example, the period-doubling bifurcation @10# and the saddlenode bifurcation are bifurcations of periodic orbits. Catastrophic events in chaotic systems such as crises @11# and basin boundary metamorphoses @12# are triggered by collision of periodic orbits, usually of low period, embedded in different dynamical invariant sets. The birth of Wada basin boundaries, meaning common boundaries of more than two basins of attraction, is caused by a saddle-node bifurcation on the basin boundary @13#. More recent study indicates that the riddling bifurcation, bifurcation that gives birth to a riddled basin, is triggered by the loss of transverse stability of some periodic orbit of low period embedded in the chaotic attractor in S @14#. In view of the role of periodic orbits played in these major bifurcations, it is desirable to study the blowout bifurcation by periodic orbits. In this regard, Ashwin, Buescu, and Stewart have noticed that as a system parameter changes towards the blowout bifurcation point, more and more atypical invariant measures become transversely unstable @2#. At the bifurcation, the natural measure of the chaotic attractor in S becomes unstable. In this paper, we establish a quantitative characterization of the blowout bifurcation by unstable periodic orbits embedded in the chaotic attractor in the invariant subspace S .I n particular, we argue that near the bifurcation, there exist two groups of periodic orbits S s and S u , each having an infinite number of members, one transversely stable and another transversely unstable, respectively. The sign of the largest transverse Lyapunov exponent L’ is determined by the relative weights of S s and S u : L’ is negative ~positive! when S s ~S u! weighs over S u ~S s!. ~A precise definition of the ‘‘weights’’ will be described in the sequel. ! At the bifurcation, the weights of S s and S u are balanced. In contrast to most known bifurcations in chaotic systems that usually involve only one or a few periodic orbits @10‐14#, blowout bifurcation is induced by a change in the transverse stability of an infinite number of unstable periodic orbits . The num