How to identify a hyperbolic set as a blender

Abstract

A blender is a hyperbolic set with a stable or unstable invariant manifold that behaves as a geometric object of a dimension larger than that of the respective manifold itself. Blenders have been constructed in diffeomorphisms with a phase space of dimension at least three. We consider here the question of how one can identify, characterize and also visualize the underlying hyperbolic set of a given diffeomorphism to verify whether it actually is a blender or not. More specifically, we employ advanced numerical techniques for the computation of global manifolds to identify the hyperbolic set and its stable and unstable manifolds in an explicit Henon-like family of three-dimensional diffeomorphisms. This allows to determine and illustrate whether the hyperbolic set is a blender; in particular, we consider as a distinguishing feature the self-similar structure of the intersection set of the respective global invariant manifold with a plane. By checking and illustrating a denseness property, we are able to identify a parameter range over which the hyperbolic set is a blender, and we discuss and illustrate how the blender disappears.