Crises and Explosions in a Symmetric Forced Oscillator
by
Alona Ben-Tal
University of Auckland

A common route to chaos in non-linear dynamical systems is through a cascade of period doubling bifurcations. Typically, this cascade also involves crises, where as a system parameter is varied one observes a sudden discontinuous change in a chaotic attractor. Crises in symmetric systems may have the special property that as a physical parameter is varied a non-symmetric chaotic attractor suddenly becomes symmetric. Different types of symmetry restoration in a class of symmetric forced oscillators will be discussed.

Date received: September 28, 2000