Universal properties of the transition from quasi-periodicity to chaos in dissipative systems

Abstract

An exact renormalization group transformation is developed for dissipative systems which describes how the transition to chaos may occur in a continuous and universal manner if the frequency ratio in the quasi-periodic regime is held at a fixed irrational value. Our approach is a natural extension of K.A.M. theory to strong coupling. Most of our analysis is for analytic circle maps. We have found a strong coupling fixed point where invertibility is lost, which describes the universal features of the transition to chaos. We find numerically that any two such critical maps with the same winding number are C 1 conjugate. It follows that the low frequency peaks in an experimental spectrum are universal and we determine how their envelope scales with frequency. When the winding number has a periodic continued fraction, our renormalization transform has a fixed point and spectra are self similar in addition. For a set of non-periodic winding numbers with full measure our renormalization transformation yields an ergodic trajectory in a sub-space of all critical maps. Physically one finds singular and universal spectra that do not scale.