Dynamical robustness of discrete conservative systems: Harper and generalized standard maps

Abstract

In recent years, statistical characterization of discrete conservative dynamical systems (more precisely, paradigmatic examples of area-preserving maps such as standard and web maps) has been analyzed extensively and has shown that for larger parameter values for which the Lyapunov exponents are largely positive over the entire phase space, the probability distribution is a Gaussian, consistent with Boltzmann–Gibbs statistics. On the other hand, for smaller parameter values for which the Lyapunov exponents are virtually zero over the entire phase space, we verify that this distribution appears to approach a q-Gaussian (with q = 1.935 ± 0.005), consistent with q-statistics. Interestingly, if the parameter values are in between these two extremes, then the probability distributions exhibit a linear combination of these two behaviors. Here, we numerically show that the Harper map is also in the same universality class of the maps discussed so far. This constitutes further evidence of the robustness of this behavior whenever the phase space consists of stable orbits. Then, we propose a generalization of the standard map for which the phase space includes many sticky regions, changing the previously observed simple linear combination behavior to a more complex combination.