Explosions of chaotic sets (Q1586872)

This paper investigates explosions of chaotic sets wherein new recurrent points suddenly appear at a non-zero distance from any pre-existing recurrent points. The authors conjecture that an explosion can occur only through four distinct mechanisms: isolated saddle-node bifurcations; embedded saddle-node bifurcations; outer homoclinic tangencies of a periodic orbit; outer heteroclinic tangencies of a pair of periodic orbits. The paper concentrates on the last two mechanisms. A general theory that unites phenomena such as crises, basin boundary metamorphoses, explosion of chaotic saddles etc. is outlined.