Strange attractors in periodically-kicked degenerate Hopf bifurcations (Q2517930)

The main objective of the paper is to demonstrate that, in the presence of shear or twist, forcing of rather general nature can transform a weakly stable dynamical system into a strange attractor. Starting with the normal form for the degenerate Hopf bifurcation in two spatial variables in polar coordinates \[ \begin{cases} \dot{r}=-\mu r+r^{5}g_{\mu}( r,\theta) ,\\ \dot{\theta}=\omega+\gamma_{\mu}\mu+\beta_{\mu}r^{2}+r^{4}h_{\mu}( r,\theta) , \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(\mu\) is the bifurcation parameter and \(\omega\) is a constant, one perturbs the flow \(\widehat{F}_{t}\) generated by the system (1) with a ``kick'' map \(\kappa\) given by \[ \kappa\left( \begin{matrix} r\cos\theta\\ r\sin\theta \end{matrix} \right) =\left( \begin{matrix} r\cos\theta\\ r\sin\theta+L\mu^{\rho_{2}} \end{matrix} \right) ,\qquad L>0,\;\rho_{2}>0. \] Then an annulus map associated with \(\widehat{F}_{t}\circ\kappa\) is defined, and, for \(\mu\) large enough, \(\widehat{F}_{\tau( \mu) } \circ\kappa\) maps the annulus \[ \mathcal A=\{ ( r,\theta) :K_{4}^{-1}\mu^{\rho_{1}}\leq r\leq K_{4}\mu^{\rho_{1}}\} \] into itself. Here \(K_{4}>1,\) \(0<\rho_{2}<\rho_{1},\) and the relaxation time \(\tau( \mu) \) is defined by \[ ( L\mu^{\rho_{2}}-K_{4}\mu^{\rho_{1}}) e^{-\mu\tau( \mu) }=\mu^{\rho_{1}}. \] The principal result in the paper asserts that under certain conditions, the annulus map \(\widehat{F}_{\tau( \mu) }\circ\kappa\) admits a strange attractor for a positive measure set of values of \(\mu.\) One of the main assumptions that the twist factor \(\beta_{0}\) is different from zero implies existence for small values of \(\mu\) of an angular-velocity gradient in the radial direction, which allows the flow to stretch and fold the phase space, thus producing chaos. The map in this setting has a nonuniformly hyperbolic character and the chaos is sustained and observable, whereas the strange attractor possesses many geometric and dynamical properties associated with chaotic systems. In fact, it supports a positive, finite number of ergodic SRB measures. The orbit of Lebesgue almost-every point in the basin of attraction has a positive Lyapunov exponent and is asymptotically distributed according to one of the ergodic SRB measures. Each SRB measure satisfies the central limit theorem and exhibits exponential decay of correlations.