A case study for homoclinic chaos in an autonomous electronic circuit. A trip from Takens-Bogdanov to Hopf-Sil'nikov (Q1312463)

In the paper the dynamics of an electronic oscillator, generalizing various situations appearing in the literature, is considered. The oscillator corresponds to an electronic circuit consisting of three non- linear conductances, two capacitors and one inductance. The current- voltage characteristics of the conductances are assumed to be odd and of third order, i.e. \(i_ k(U) = \mu_ kU + A_ k U^ 3\); \(k = 1, 2, 3\). For simplicity, apart from the study of local bifurcations at the equilibria of the general system, one of the conductances is assumed to be zero, so that, after a rescaling, the evolution of the system is described by \[ \begin{aligned} r\dot x & = -\nu x + \beta(y - x) - A_ 3 x^ 3 + B_ 3(y - x)^ 3\\ \dot y & = -\beta(y - x) - z - B_ 3(y - x)^ 3\\ \dot z & = y. \end{aligned} \] The authors study attractors, periodic oscillations and homoclinic orbits of the system. Most results are presented in the \(\nu - \beta\)-plane. As consequence of the presence of a repulsive homoclinic orbit corresponding to a saddle-focus equilibrium they find a rich variety of periodic and aperiodic motions. An impressive number of detailed results is given.