On strange nonchaotic attractors and their dimensions (Q1177077)

Recent numerical and experimental studies on dissipative systems have indicated the existence of nonchaotic strange attractors (i.e. strange attracting sets which look topologically strange but are nonchaotic). In the paper the author presents some characterization techniques associated with Poincaré sections, Lyapunov exponents, capacity and information dimension, in order to distinguish between chaotic and nonchaotic strange behaviour. It is shown that, based on a single time series it is virtually impossible to distinguish them even using Lyapunov exponent techniques. On a model proposed by El Naschie as a prototype for strange nonchaotic behaviour it is indicated how to overcome this difficulty.