Continuation and collapse of homoclinic tangles

TL;DR

This paper investigates how homoclinic tangles in dynamical systems evolve and collapse through bifurcation analysis, using numerical continuation and symbolic dynamics, with detailed study on the Hénon family.

Contribution

It introduces a bifurcation framework for homoclinic tangles near tangency points, linking symbolic sequences to bifurcation equations and analyzing multi-humped orbit structures.

Findings

Homoclinic tangles can be characterized by bifurcation equations indexed by symbolic sequences.

The bifurcation structure of multi-humped orbits is detailed for the Hénon family.

Homoclinic networks are explained through bifurcation analysis and graph theory.

Abstract

By a classical theorem transversal homoclinic points of maps lead to shift dynamics on a maximal invariant set, also referred to as a homoclinic tangle. In this paper we study the fate of homoclinic tangles in parameterized systems from the viewpoint of numerical continuation and bifurcation theory. The bifurcation result shows that the maximal invariant set near a homoclinic tangency, where two homoclinic tangles collide, can be characterized by a system of bifurcation equations that is indexed by a symbolic sequence. For the H\'{e}non family we investigate in detail the bifurcation structure of multi-humped orbits originating from several tangencies. The homoclinic network found by numerical continuation is explained by combining our bifurcation result with graph-theoretical arguments.