Time-averaged properties of unstable periodic orbits and chaotic orbits in ordinary differential equation systems.

It has recently been found in some dynamical systems in fluid dynamics that only a few unstable periodic orbits (UPOs) with low periods can give good approximations to the mean properties of turbulent (chaotic) solutions. By employing three chaotic systems described by ordinary differential equations, we compare time-averaged properties of a set of UPOs and those of a set of segments of chaotic orbits. For every chaotic system we study, the distributions of a time average of a dynamical variable along UPOs with lower and higher periods are similar to each other and the variance of the distribution is small, in contrast with that along chaotic segments. The distribution seems to converge to some limiting distribution with nonzero variance as the period of the UPO increases, although that along chaotic orbits inclines to converge to a delta -like distribution. These properties seem to lie in the background of why only a few UPOs with low periods can give good mean statistical properties in dynamical systems in fluid dynamics.