A devil's staircase into chaotic scattering (Q1178847)

This paper focuses on an analytical description of the transition to chaos for the piecewise linearization of a simple scattering model. The author develops a well-oriented symbol dynamics --- i.e. a generalized symbolic dynamics which incorporates the orientation and reflection properties of the dynamics. Using his symbol dynamics, he achieves a reduction of the two-parameter family of invariant sets to a one- parameter family, parametrized by the so-called pruning parameter. Solving for the pruning parameter in the transition range, the author identifies a periodic regime of the pruning parameter where the corresponding invariant sets consist only of finitely many periodic orbits. Only at discrete bifurcation values of the pruning parameter do the invariant sets change. The accumulation value of those bifurcations arises as a homoclinic bifurcation of an atypical type. The author notes that chaos sets in at the homoclinic bifurcation where its onset can be seen as the topological entropy becomes positive and the grammatical complexity has a jump discontinuity. Furthermore, the topological entropy appears to grow as a devil's staircase.