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Basin of attraction - Scholarpedia

Basin of attraction
Edward Ott, Univ ersity of Mary land, MD, USA

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Roughly speaking, an attractor of a dynamical system is a subset of the state space to which orbits originating from ty pical initial conditions tend as time increases. It is v ery common for dy namical sy stems to hav e more than one attractor. For each such attractor, its basin of attraction is the set of initial conditions leading to long-time behav ior that approaches that attractor. Thus the qualitativ e behav ior of the long-time motion of a giv en sy stem can be fundamentally different depending on which basin of attraction the initial condition lies in (e.g., attractors can correspond to periodic, quasiperiodic or chaotic behav iors of different ty pes). Regarding a basin of attraction as a region in the state space, it has been found that the basic topological structure of such regions can v ary greatly from sy stem to sy stem. In what follows we giv e ex amples and discuss sev eral qualitativ ely different kinds of basins of attraction and their practical implications.

Example
A simple ex ample is that of a point particle mov ing in a twowell potential with friction, as in Figure 1 (a). Due to the friction, all initial conditions, ex cept those at or on its stable manifold ev entually come to rest at either or which are the two attractors of the sy stem. A point initially placed on the unstable equilibrium point, will stay there forev er; and this state has a onedimensional stable manifold. Figure 1 (b) shows the basins of attraction of the two stable equilibrium point, where the crosshatched region is the basin for the attractor at and the blank region is the basin for the attractor at The boundary separating these two basins is the stable manifold of the unstable equilibrium

Fractal basin boundaries

In the abov e ex ample, the basin boundary was a smooth curv e. Howev er, other possibilities ex ist. An ex ample of this occurs for the map
, 1 dom ) nx3( =
1 + nx

For almost any initial condition (ex cept for those precisely on the boundary between the basins of attraction), is either or which we may regard as the two attractors of the sy stem. Figure 2 shows the basin structure for this map, with the basin for the attractor black and the basin of the attractor blank. In contrast to the prev ious ex ample, the basin boundary is no longer a smooth curv e. In fact, it is a fractal curv e with a box -counting dimension 1 .62.... We emphasize that, although fractal, this basin boundary is still a simple curv e (it can be written as a continuous parametric functional relationship for such that if )
)) 2 s( y ,) 2 s(x( )) 1 s( y ,) 1 s(x( = y 0 > s > 1 , = y ) s( y = y ,) s(x = x + = y + = y
n

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, )x( V

nx2

0 = td/xd = x soc + 5.1 = , 0x = x .0 = x

1+n

nmil

0x

= x .

,0 = x

0x = x

0x

2s

0x

= x

= x

Fig u r e 1 : (a ) Dou ble w ell pot en t ia l a n d (b) t h e r esu lt in g ba sin s of a t t r a ct ion .

1s

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Another ex ample of a sy stem with a fractal basin boundary is the forced damped pendulum equation,
. t soc 1.2 = nis + td/ d1.0 +
2

For these parameters, there are two attractors which are both periodic orbits (Grebogi, Ott and Y orke, 1 987 ). Figure 3 shows the basins of attraction of these two attractors with initial v alues plotted horizontally and initial v alues of plotted v ertically . The figure was made by initializing many initial conditions on a fine rectangular grid. Each initial condition was then integrated forward to see which attractor its orbit approached. If the orbit approached a particular one of the two attractors, a black dot was plotted on the grid. If it approached the other attractor, no dot was plotted. The dots are dense enough that they fill in a solid black region ex cept near the basin boundary . The speckled appearance of much of this figure is a consequence of the intricate, finescaled structure of the basin boundary . In this case the basin boundary is again a fractal set (its box -counting dimension is about 1 .8), but its topology is more complicated than that of the basin boundary of Figure 2 in that the Figure 3 basin boundary is not a simple curv e. In both of the abov e ex amples in which fractal basin boundaries occur, the fractality is a result of chaotic motion (see transient chaos) of orbits on the boundary , and this is generally the case for fractal basin boundaries (McDonald et al., 1 985).

Basin Boundary Metamorphoses

We hav e seen so far that there can be basin boundaries of qualitativ ely different ty pes. As in the case of attractors, bifurcations can occur in which basin boundaries undergo qualitativ e changes as a sy stem parameter passes through a critical bifurcation v alue. For ex ample, for a sy stem parameter the basin boundary might be a simple smooth curv e, while for it might be fractal. Such basin boundary bifurcations hav e been called metamorphoses (Grebogi, et al., 1 987 ).

The Uncertainty Exponent

Fig u r e 2 : A ca se w h er e t h e ba sin bou n da r y is a fr a ct a l cu r v e.

Fractal basin boundaries, like those illustrated abov e, are ex tremely common and hav e potentially important practical consequences. In particular, they may make it more difficult to identify the attractor corresponding to a giv en initial condition, if that initial condition has some uncertainty . This aspect is already implied by the speckled appearance of Figure 3. A quantitativ e measure of this is prov ided by the uncertainty exponent (McDonald et al., 1 985). For definiteness, suppose we randomly choose an initial condition with uniform probability density in the area of initial condition space corresponding to the plot in Figure 3. Then, with probability one, that initial condition will lie in one of the basins of the two attractors [the basin boundary has zero Lebesgue measure (i.e., 'zero area') and so there is zero probability that a random initial condition is on the boundary ]. Now assume that we are also told that the initial condition has some giv en uncertainty , and, for the sake of illustration, assume that this uncertainty can be represented by say ing that the real initial condition lies within a circle of radius centered at the coordinates that were randomly chosen. We ask what is the probability that the could lie in a basin that is different from that of the true initial condition, i.e., what is the probability , that the uncertainty could cause us to make a mistake in a determination of the attractor that the orbit goes to. Geometrically , this is the same as asking what fraction of the area of Figure 3 is within a distance of the basin boundary . This fraction scales as
www.scholarpedia.org/w/index.php?title=Basin_of_attraction&printable=yes
) 0 y , 0x( , )( ) 0 y , 0x( ,

td/ d
c

p > p

td/ d

p < p

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Fig u r e 3 : Ba sin s of a t t r a ct ion for a for ced da m ped pen du lu m (pict u r e m a de by H.E. Nu sse).

where is the uncertainty exponent (McDonald et al., 1 985) and is giv en by where is the dimension of the initial condition space ( for Figure 3) and is the box -counting dimension of the basin boundary . For the ex ample of Figure 3, since we hav e For small it becomes v ery difficult to improv e predictiv e capacity (i.e., to predict the attractor from the initial condition) by reducing the uncertainty . For ex ample, if to reduce by a factor of 1 0, the uncertainty would hav e to be reduced by a factor of Thus, fractal basin boundaries (analogous to the butterfly effect of chaotic attractors) pose a barrier to prediction, and this barrier is related to the presence of chaos.

Riddled Basins of Attraction

We now discuss a ty pe of basin topology that may occur in certain special sy stems; namely , sy stems that, through a sy mmetry or some other constraint, hav e a smooth inv ariant manifold. That is, there ex ists a smooth surface or hy persurface in the phase space, such that any initial condition in the surface generates an orbit that remains in the surface. These sy stems can hav e a particularly bizarre ty pe of basin structure called a riddled basin of attraction (Alex ander et al., 1 992; Ott et al., 1 994). In order to discuss what this means, we first hav e to clearly state what we mean by an "attractor". For the purposes of this discussion, we use the definition of Milnor (1 985): a set in state space is an attractor if it is the limit set of orbits originating from a set of initial conditions of positiv e Lebesgue measure. That is, if we randomly choose an initial condition with uniform probability density in a suitable sphere of initial condition space, there is a non-zero probability that the orbit from the chosen initial condition goes to the attractor. This definition differs from another common definition of an attractor which requires that there ex ists some neighborhood of an attractor such that all initial conditions in this neighborhood generate orbits that limit on the attractor. As we shall see, an "attractor" with a riddled basin conforms with the first definition, but not the second definition. The failure to satisfy the second definition is because there are points arbitrarily close to an attractor with a riddled basin, such that these points generate orbits that go to another attractor (hence the neighborhood mentioned abov e does not ex ist.) We are now ready to say what we mean by a riddled basin. Suppose our sy stem has two attractors which we
, A ^ p A ^ . C ^ A ^ C A

denote

and

with basins

and

We say that the basin

is riddled, if, for every point

^

in

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0D

D =

. 2.0

0D

)(

, 8.1

)(
0D

, 2.0 =

2 = D

01

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p )p( B

Basin of attraction - Scholarpedia

. 0 > C ^

radius ball, centered at contains a positiv e Lebesgue measure of points in for any This circumstance has the following surprising implication. Say we initialize a state at and find that the resulting orbit goes to Now say that we attempt to repeat this ex periment. If there is any error in our resetting of the initial condition, we cannot be sure that the orbit will go to (rather than ), and this is the case no matter how small our error is. Put another way , ev en though the basin has positiv e Lebesgue measure (non-zero v olume), the set and its boundary set are the same. Thus the ex istence of riddled basins calls into question the repeatability Fig u r e 4 : Sch em a t ic illu st r a t ion of a sit u a t ion w it h a r iddled ba sin of of ex periments in such situations. a t t r a ct ion . Figure 4 illustrates the situation we hav e been discussing. As shown in Figure 4, the attractor with a riddled basin lies on a smooth inv ariant surface (or manifold) and this is general for attractors with riddled basins. Ty pical sy stems do not admit smooth inv ariant manifolds, and this is why riddled basins (fortunately ?) do not occur in generic cases. Ex amples, where a dy namical sy stem has a smooth inv ariant surface are a sy stem with reflection sy mmetry of some coordinate about in which case would be an inv ariant manifold, and a predator-prey model in population dy namics, in which case one of the populations being zero (ex tinction) is an inv ariant manifold of the model.
A ^ A ^ A . A ^ C p

References
Alex ander, J., Y orke, J.A., Y ou, Z., and Kan, I. Riddled Basins (1 992) Int. J. Bif. Chaos 2:7 95. Grebogi, C., Ott, E. and Y orke, J.A. (1 987 ) Basin Boundary Metamorphoses: Changes in Accessible Boundary Orbits, Phy sica D 24:243. McDonald, S.W., Grebogi, C., Ott, E., and Y orke, J.A. (1 985) Fractal Basin Boundaries, Phy sica D 1 7 :1 25. Milnor, J. (1 985) On the Concept of an Attractor, Comm. Math. Phy s. 99:1 7 7 . Ott, E., Chapter 5 in Chaos in Dy namical Sy stems, Cambridge Univ ersity Press, second edition 2003. Ott, E., Sommerer, J.C., Alex ander, J.C., Kan, I., and Y orke, J.A. (1 994) The Transition to Chaotic Attractors with Riddled Basins, Phy sica D 7 6:384. Internal references John W. Milnor (2006) Attractor. Scholarpedia, 1 (1 1 ):1 81 5. Peter Ashwin (2006) Bubbling transition. Scholarpedia, 1 (8):1 7 25. Edward Ott (2006) Controlling chaos. Scholarpedia, 1 (8):1 699. Edward Ott (2006) Crises. Scholarpedia, 1 (1 0):1 7 00. Jeff Moehlis, Kresimir Josic, Eric T. Shea-Brown (2006) Periodic orbit. Scholarpedia, 1 (7 ):1 358. Frank Hoppensteadt (2006) Predator-prey model. Scholarpedia, 1 (1 0):1 563. Philip Holmes and Eric T. Shea-Brown (2006) Stability . Scholarpedia, 1 (1 0):1 838.

External Links
Author's webpage (http://www.ee.umd.edu/faculty /ott.html)

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, 0 = x

, S

0 = x

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See Also
Attractor Dimension, Bubbling Transition, Chaos, Crises, Controlling Chaos, Dy namical Sy stems, Inv ariant Manifolds, Periodic Orbit, Stability , Transient Chaos, Unstable Periodic Orbits Sponsored by : Eugene M. Izhikev ich, Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-rev iewed open-access ency clopedia Rev iewed by (http://www.scholarpedia.org/w/index .php?title=Basin_of_attraction&oldid=2867 ) : Anony mous Rev iewed by (http://www.scholarpedia.org/w/index .php?title=Basin_of_attraction&oldid=0) : Eugene M. Izhikev ich, Editor-in-Chief of Scholarpedia, the peer-rev iewed open-access ency clopedia Accepted on: 2006-08-31 1 3:37 :02 GMT (http://www.scholarpedia.org/w/index .php? title=Basin_of_attraction&oldid=2968) Category : Dy namical Sy stems
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