INTERMITTENCY AND CHAOS NEAR HOPF BIFURCATION WITH BROKEN 𝕆(2) × 𝕆(2) SYMMETRY

Abstract

The eight-dimensional normal form for a Hopf bifurcation with 𝕆(2) × 𝕆(2) symmetry is perturbed by imperfection terms that break a continuous translation symmetry. The parameters of the fully symmetric normal form are fixed to values for which all basic periodic solutions residing in two-dimensional fixed point subspaces are unstable, and the dynamics is attracted by a chaotic attractor resulting from a period doubling cascade of periodic orbits. By using symmetry-adapted variables, the dimension of the phase space of the normal form is reduced to four and the dimension of the perturbed normal form is reduced to five. In the reduced phase space, periodic solutions are revealed as fixed points, and quasiperiodic solutions as periodic orbits. For the perturbed normal form, parameter regimes with different types of chaotic dynamics are identified when the imperfection parameter is varied. The characteristics of this complex dynamics are symmetry breaking and increasing, various period doubling cascades, intermittency and crises, and switching between symmetry-conjugated chaotic saddles. In particular, the perturbed system serves as a low dimensional model for the complicated switching dynamics found in simulations of the globally coupled system of Ginzburg–Landau equations extending the 𝕆(2) × 𝕆(2)-symmetric normal form to account for spatial modulations. In addition, this system can be considered as a low dimensional model for the dynamics of perturbed waves in anisotropic systems with imperfect geometries due to the presence of sidewalls.