Homoclinic Loops, Heteroclinic Cycles, and Rank One Dynamics

Abstract

We prove that genuine nonuniformly hyperbolic dynamics emerge when flows in ${R}^{N}$ with homoclinic loops or heteroclinic cycles are subjected to certain time-periodic forcing. In particular, we establish the emergence of strange attractors and Sinai--Ruelle--Bowen (SRB) measures with strong statistical properties (central limit theorem, exponential decay of correlations, etc.). We identify and study the mechanism responsible for the nonuniform hyperbolicity: saddle point shear. Our results apply to concrete systems of interest in the biological and physical sciences, such as May--Leonard models of Lotka--Volterra dynamics.