Noise-induced chaos in an electronic Burridge-Knopoff model analog

Abstract

Electronic analog circuits are valuable platforms to experimentally address physical systems whose implementation would otherwise be unwieldy. Besides validating numerical predictions, electronic analogs of nonlinear systems are also ideal tools to study the effect of noise injection in realistic conditions and are often more scalable than numerical approaches. In this work, we address the effect of noise injection in an electronic analog of the Burridge-Knopoff mechanical model of earthquake faults. Noise is injected into the friction term of the mechanical system: interestingly, the presence of a sufficient level of noise can trigger the onset of chaos in otherwise periodic regimes.