Dynamical systems possessing symmetries have invariant manifolds. According to the transversal stability properties of this invariant manifold, nearby trajectories may spend long stretches of time in its vicinity before being repelled from it as a chaotic burst, after which the trajectories return to their original laminar behavior. The onset of chaotic bursting is determined by the loss of transversal stability of low-period periodic orbits embedded in the invariant manifold, in such a way that the shadowability of chaotic orbits is broken due to unstable dimension variability, characterized by finite-time Lyapunov exponents fluctuating about zero. We use a two-dimensional map with an invariant subspace to estimate shadowing distances and times from the statistical properties of the bursts in the transversal direction. A stochastic model (biased random walk with reflecting barrier) is used to relate the shadowability properties to the distribution of the finite-time Lyapunov exponents.

• Received 5 June 2002

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.66.046213