The Scaling of Chaos vs Periodicity: How Certain is it that an Attractor is Chaotic?

Abstract

The character of the time-asymptotic evolution of physical systems can have complex, singular behavior with variation of a system parameter, particularly when chaos is involved. A perturbation of the parameter by a small amount $\epsilon$ can convert an attractor from chaotic to non-chaotic or vice-versa. We call a parameter value where this can happen $\epsilon$-uncertain. The probability that a random choice of the parameter is $\epsilon$-uncertain commonly scales like a power law in $\epsilon$. Surprisingly, two seemingly similar ways of defining this scaling, both of physical interest, yield different numerical values for the scaling exponent. We show why this happens and present a quantitative analysis of this phenomenon.