Universal transition in a dynamical system forced at two incommensurate frequencies (Q1080681)

The authors give a qualitative description based on numerical experiments for the behaviour of the dynamical system on \(T^ 2\) described by the map \[ (\phi_ 1,\quad \phi_ 2)\mapsto (\phi_ 1+\omega +a \cos \phi_ 1+b\quad \cos (\phi_ 1-\phi_ 2),\phi_ 2+2\pi \sigma),\quad with\quad \sigma =(\sqrt{5}-1)/2. \] For certain values of the parameters one finds a stable invariant curve \(\phi_ 1=s(\phi_ 2)\) and an unstable invariant curve \(\phi_ 1=u(\phi_ 2)\); the rotation number \(\rho_ 1\) in the \(\phi_ 1\)-direction is zero, while the rotation number \(\rho_ 2\) in the \(\phi_ 2\)-direction is (for all values of the parameters) equal to \(\sigma\). The paper describes two scenario's by which this mode locked state may undergo a transition to chaos under a change of parameters. One is by a saddle-node transition, whereby the stable and unstable curves coalesce and disappear, and \(\rho_ 1\) becomes nonzero because of some intermittent bursts in the \(\phi_ 1\)-direction. A second transition to chaos is by a crinkling of the stable curve, leading to a chaotic state with \(\rho_ 1=0\) and a fuzzy, ''tornado'' like attractor. At multicritical parameter values where both transitions happen at the same time scaling and low-frequency power spectra are observed; a renormalisation group treatment for this problem is proposed.