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Updated: Dec 5, 2025

Evolution of Staircase Structures in Diffusive Convection
Published on: September 5, 2018
Universal generation of devil's staircases near Hopf bifurcations via modulated forcing of nonlinear systems
Benjamin Lingnau1,2, Kevin Shortiss1,2,3, Fabien Dubois1,2
1Department of Physics, University College Cork, Cork T12 K8AF, Ireland.
Abstract:
The discrete circle map is the archetypical example of a driven periodic system, showing a complex resonance structure under a change of the forcing frequency known as the devil's staircase. Adler's equation can be seen as the direct continuous equivalent of the circle map, describing locking effects in periodic systems with continuous forcing. This type of locking produces a single fundamental resonance tongue without higher-order resonances, and a devil's staircase is not observed. We show that, with harmonically modulated forcing, nonlinear oscillations close to a Hopf bifurcation generically reproduce the devil's staircase even in the continuous case. Experimental results on a semiconductor laser driven by a modulated optical signal show excellent agreement with our theoretical predictions. The locking appears as a modulation of the oscillation amplitude as well as the angular oscillation frequency. Our results show that by proper implementation of an external drive, additional regions of stable frequency locking can be introduced in systems which originally show only a single Adler-type resonance tongue. The induced resonances can be precisely controlled via the modulation parameters.
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