Stalactite basin structure of dynamical systems with transient chaos in an invariant manifold.

Dynamical systems with invariant manifolds occur in a variety of situations (e.g., identical coupled oscillators, and systems with a symmetry). We consider the case where there is both a nonchaotic attractor (e.g., a periodic orbit) and a nonattracting chaotic set (or chaotic repeller) in the invariant manifold. We consider the character of the basins for the attracting nonchaotic set in the invariant manifold and another attractor not in the invariant manifold. It is found that the boundary separating these basins has an interesting structure: The basin of the attractor not in the invariant manifold is characterized by thin cusp shaped regions ("stalactites") extending down to touch the nonattracting chaotic set in the invariant manifold. We also develop theoretical scalings applicable to these systems, and compare with numerical experiments. (c) 2000 American Institute of Physics.