Peeling Bifurcations of Toroidal Chaotic Attractors

Chaotic attractors with toroidal topology (van der Pol attractor) have counterparts with symmetry that exhibit unfamiliar phenomena. We investigate double covers of toroidal attractors, discuss changes in their morphology under correlated peeling bifurcations, describe their topological structures and the changes undergone as a symmetry axis crosses the original attractor, and indicate how the symbol name of a trajectory in the original lifts to one in the cover. Covering orbits are described using a powerful synthesis of kneading theory with refinements of the circle map. These methods are applied to a simple version of the van der Pol oscillator.Comment: 7 pages, 14 figures, accepted to Physical Review

Deterministic polarization chaos from a laser diode

Fifty years after the invention of the laser diode and fourty years after the report of the butterfly effect - i.e. the unpredictability of deterministic chaos, it is said that a laser diode behaves like a damped nonlinear oscillator. Hence no chaos can be generated unless with additional forcing or parameter modulation. Here we report the first counter-example of a free-running laser diode generating chaos. The underlying physics is a nonlinear coupling between two elliptically polarized modes in a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. We identify chaos in experimental time-series and show theoretically the bifurcations leading to single- and double-scroll attractors with characteristics similar to Lorenz chaos. The reported polarization chaos resembles at first sight a noise-driven mode hopping but shows opposite statistical properties. Our findings open up new research areas that combine the high speed performances of microcavity lasers with controllable and integrated sources of optical chaos.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure

Variations of Boundary Surface in Chua’s Circuit

The paper compares the boundary surfaces with help of cross-sections in three projection planes, for the four changes of Chua’s circuit parameters. It is known that due to changing the parameters, the Chua’s circuit can be characterized in addition to a stable limit cycle also by one double scroll chaotic attractor, two single scroll chaotic attractors or other two stable limit cycles. Chua’s circuit can even start working as a binary memory. It is not known yet, how changes in parameters and conseqently in attractors in the circuit will affect the morphology of the boundary surface. The boundary surface separates the double scroll chaotic attractor from the stable limit cycle. In a variation of the parameters presented in this paper the boundary surface will separate even single scroll chaotic attractors from each other. Dividing the state space into regions of attractivity for different attractors, however, remains fundamentally the same