Experimental Validation of Multiple Attractors in a Simple Chaotic Circuit

Abstract

In this paper, a simple jerk circuit that allows studying the dynamical behavior of a three-dimensional autonomous chaotic system with only one nonlinear term is further investigated by numerical simulations and experimental validation. Depending on a single tuning parameter, the chaotic system is theoretically studied using standard techniques such as equilibrium analysis, bifurcation diagram, and Lyapunov exponents. Subsequently, the circuit that models the chaotic system is implemented to validate theoretical prediction experimentally. Despite the simple structure of the jerk circuit, experimental study of Fourier spectra has shown that the jerk circuit displays complex dynamics characterized by periodic limit cycles and aperiodic strange attractors. In addition, the jerk circuit has exhibited a wide tuning range and experimental results have shown good agreement with theoretical prediction except for few cases where numerical simulation has failed to accurately match experimental results due to sensitivity to initial conditions which is a signature of chaotic nonlinear systems.