Characterizing weak chaos in nonintegrable Hamiltonian systems: the fundamental role of stickiness and initial conditions

Weak chaos in high-dimensional conservative systems can be characterized through sticky effect induced by invariant structures on chaotic trajectories. Suitable quantities for this characterization are the higher cummulants of the finite time Lyapunov exponents (FTLEs) distribution. They gather the {\it whole} phase space relevant dynamics in {\it one} quantity and give informations about ordered and random states. This is analyzed here for discrete Hamiltonian systems with local and global couplings. It is also shown that FTLEs plotted {\it versus} initial condition (IC) and the nonlinear parameter is essential to understand the fundamental role of ICs in the dynamics of weakly chaotic Hamiltonian systems.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures, submitted for publicatio

Decay of distance autocorrelation and Lyapunov exponents

This work presents numerical evidences that for discrete dynamical systems with one positive Lyapunov exponent the decay of the distance autocorrelation is always related to the Lyapunov exponent. Distinct decay laws for the distance autocorrelation are observed for different systems, namely exponential decays for the quadratic map, logarithmic for the H\'enon map and power-law for the conservative standard map. In all these cases the decay exponent is close to the positive Lyapunov exponent. For hyperbolic conservative systems, the power-law decay of the distance autocorrelation tends to be guided by the smallest Lyapunov exponent.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure

Characterizing Weak Chaos using Time Series of Lyapunov Exponents

We investigate chaos in mixed-phase-space Hamiltonian systems using time series of the finite- time Lyapunov exponents. The methodology we propose uses the number of Lyapunov exponents close to zero to define regimes of ordered (stickiness), semi-ordered (or semi-chaotic), and strongly chaotic motion. The dynamics is then investigated looking at the consecutive time spent in each regime, the transition between different regimes, and the regions in the phase-space associated to them. Applying our methodology to a chain of coupled standard maps we obtain: (i) that it allows for an improved numerical characterization of stickiness in high-dimensional Hamiltonian systems, when compared to the previous analyses based on the distribution of recurrence times; (ii) that the transition probabilities between different regimes are determined by the phase-space volume associated to the corresponding regions; (iii) the dependence of the Lyapunov exponents with the coupling strength.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure