Dimension-scalable recurrence threshold estimation

Abstract

The appropriate selection of recurrence thresholds is a key problem in applications of recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) and related methods across disciplines. Here, we discuss the distribution of pairwise distances between state vectors in the studied system's state space reconstructed by means of time-delay embedding as the key characteristic that should guide the corresponding choice for obtaining an adequate resolution of a recurrence plot. Specifically, we present an empirical description of the distance distribution, focusing on characteristic changes of its shape with increasing embedding dimension. Based on our results, we recommend selecting the recurrence threshold adaptively according to a fixed quantile of this distribution. We highlight the advantages of this strategy over other previously suggested approaches by discussing the performance of selected RQA measures in detecting chaos--chaos transitions in some prototypical model system.