Coexistence of Multiple Attractors and Crisis Route to Chaos in a Novel Chaotic Jerk Circuit

In this paper, a novel autonomous RC chaotic jerk circuit is introduced and the corresponding dynamics is systematically investigated. The circuit consists of opamps, resistors, capacitors and a pair of semiconductor diodes connected in anti-parallel to synthesize the nonlinear component necessary for chaotic oscillations. The model is described by a continuous time three-dimensional autonomous system with hyperbolic sine nonlinearity, and may be viewed as a linear transformation of model MO15 previously introduced in [Sprott, 2010]. The structure of the equilibrium points and the discrete symmetries of the model equations are discussed. The bifurcation analysis indicates that chaos arises via the usual paths of period-doubling and symmetry restoring crisis. One of the key contributions of this work is the finding of a region in the parameter space in which the proposed ("elegant") jerk circuit exhibits the unusual and striking feature of multiple attractors (i.e. coexistence of four disconnected periodic and chaotic attractors). Laboratory experimental results are in good agreement with the theoretical predictions.