About two mechanisms of reunion of chaotic attractors (Q1809594)

The goal of this work is to describe some aspects of the reunion of two or more pieces of a cyclic chaotic attractor in \(\mathbb{R}^2\) into a one-piece chaotic attracting set. To this end the authors consider the family of 2-dimensional piecewise linear continuous maps, depending on four parameters, given by \[ F= \begin{cases} F_1:\binom{x}{y} \mapsto \binom {l\;0}{0\;a} \binom{x}{y}, &y\leq x+1,\\ F_2: \binom{x}{y} \mapsto \binom {l-b\;b}{a-d\;d} \binom{x}{y}+ \binom {-b}{a-d}, &y\geq x+1, \end{cases} \] which can be considered as a ``two-dimensional'' analogue of the skew tent map. The authors study a so-called ``contact bifurcation'' of the first and second kind. They show that in the case of second kind, the reunion occurs immediately due to homoclinic bifurcation of some saddle cycle belonging to the basin boundary attractor. In the case of a contact bifurcation of first kind, the reunion is a result of a contact of the attractor with its basin boundary which is fractal.