Slim Fractals: The Geometry of Doubly Transient Chaos

Traditional studies of chaos in conservative and driven dissipative systems have established a correspondence between sensitive dependence on initial conditions and fractal basin boundaries, but much less is known about the relation between geometry and dynamics in undriven dissipative systems. These systems can exhibit a prevalent form of complex dynamics, dubbed doubly transient chaos because not only typical trajectories but also the (otherwise invariant) chaotic saddles are transient. This property, along with a manifest lack of scale invariance, has hindered the study of the geometric properties of basin boundaries in these systems--most remarkably, the very question of whether they are fractal across all scales has yet to be answered. Here we derive a general dynamical condition that answers this question, which we use to demonstrate that the basin boundaries can indeed form a true fractal; in fact, they do so generically in a broad class of transiently chaotic undriven dissipative systems. Using physical examples, we demonstrate that the boundaries typically form a slim fractal, which we define as a set whose dimension at a given resolution decreases when the resolution is increased. To properly characterize such sets, we introduce the notion of equivalent dimension for quantifying their relation with sensitive dependence on initial conditions at all scales. We show that slim fractal boundaries can exhibit complex geometry even when they do not form a true fractal and fractal scaling is observed only above a certain length scale at each boundary point. Thus, our results reveal slim fractals as a geometrical hallmark of transient chaos in undriven dissipative systems.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures, proof corrections implemente

Why Optimal States Recruit Fewer Reactions in Metabolic Networks

The metabolic network of a living cell involves several hundreds or thousands of interconnected biochemical reactions. Previous research has shown that under realistic conditions only a fraction of these reactions is concurrently active in any given cell. This is partially determined by nutrient availability, but is also strongly dependent on the metabolic function and network structure. Here, we establish rigorous bounds showing that the fraction of active reactions is smaller (rather than larger) in metabolic networks evolved or engineered to optimize a specific metabolic task, and we show that this is largely determined by the presence of thermodynamically irreversible reactions in the network. We also show that the inactivation of a certain number of reactions determined by irreversibility can generate a cascade of secondary reaction inactivations that propagates through the network. The mathematical results are complemented with numerical simulations of the metabolic networks of the bacterium Escherichia coli and of human cells, which show, counterintuitively, that even the maximization of the total reaction flux in the network leads to a reduced number of active reactions.Comment: Contribution to the special issue in honor of John Guckenheimer on the occasion of his 65th birthda