Mitigating long transient time in deterministic systems by resetting

How long does a trajectory take to reach a stable equilibrium point in the basin of attraction of a dynamical system? This is a question of quite general interest and has stimulated a lot of activities in dynamical and stochastic systems where the metric of this estimation is often known as the transient or first passage time. In nonlinear systems, one often experiences long transients due to their underlying dynamics. We apply resetting or restart, an emerging concept in statistical physics and stochastic process, to mitigate the detrimental effects of prolonged transients in deterministic dynamical systems. We show that resetting the intrinsic dynamics intermittently to a spatial control line that passes through the equilibrium point can dramatically expedite its completion, resulting in a huge reduction in mean transient time and fluctuations around it. Moreover, our study reveals the emergence of an optimal restart time that globally minimizes the mean transient time. We corroborate the results with detailed numerical studies on two canonical setups in deterministic dynamical systems, namely, the Stuart-Landau oscillator and the Lorenz system. The key features-expedition of transient time-are found to be very generic under different resetting strategies. Our analysis opens up a door to control the mean and fluctuations in transient time by unifying the original dynamics with an external stochastic or periodic timer and poses open questions on the optimal way to harness transients in dynamical systems.