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Laminar Chaos in Experiments: Nonlinear Systems with Time-Varying Delays and Noise
Joseph D Hart1,2, Rajarshi Roy1,2,3, David Müller-Bender4
1Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Abstract:
A new type of dynamics called laminar chaos was recently discovered through a theoretical analysis of a scalar delay differential equation with time-varying delay. Laminar chaos is a low-dimensional dynamics characterized by laminar phases of nearly constant intensity with periodic durations and a chaotic variation of the intensity from one laminar phase to the next laminar phase. This is in stark contrast to the typically observed higher-dimensional turbulent chaos, which is characterized by strong fluctuations. In this Letter we provide the first experimental observation of laminar chaos by studying an optoelectronic feedback loop with time-varying delay. The noise inherent in the experiment requires the development of a nonlinear Langevin equation with variable delay. The results show that laminar chaos can be observed in higher-order systems, and that the phenomenon is robust to noise and a digital implementation of the variable time delay.
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