Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Butterfly effect
Butterfly effect
week in the case of weather), since it is impossible to measure the starting atmospheric conditions completely accurately.
Point attractors in 2D phase space. In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions; where a small change at one place in a nonlinear system can result in large differences to a later state. The effect derives its name from the theoretical example of a hurricanes formation being contingent on whether or not a distant butterfly had flapped its wings several weeks before. Although the butterfly effect may appear to be an esoteric and unusual behavior, it is exhibited by very simple systems: for example, a ball placed at the crest of a hill might roll into any of several valleys depending on slight differences in initial position. The term "butterfly effect" itself is related to the meteorological work of Edward Lorenz, who popularized the term. The butterfly effect is a common trope in fiction when presenting scenarios involving time travel and with "what if" cases where one storyline diverges at the moment of a seemingly minor event resulting in two significantly different outcomes.
Theory
Recurrence, the approximate return of a system towards its initial conditions, together with sensitive dependence on initial conditions, are the two main ingredients for chaotic motion. They have the practical consequence of making complex systems, such as the weather, difficult to predict past a certain time range (approximately a
Butterfly effect
given Hamiltonian system, the quantum butterfly effect considers the effect of a small change in the Hamiltonian system with a given initial position and velocity.[14][15] This quantum butterfly effect has been demonstrated experimentally.[16] Quantum and semiclassical treatments of system sensitivity to initial conditions are known as quantum chaos.[8][14]
In popular culture
Main article: Butterfly effect in popular culture
See also
Avalanche effect Behavioral Cusp Cascading failure Causality Chain reaction Determinism Domino effect Dynamical systems Fractal Innovation butterfly Kessler Syndrome Law of unintended consequences Positive feedback Snowball effect Traffic congestion Tropical cyclogenesis
Examples
The butterfly effect is most familiar in terms of weather; it can easily be demonstrated in standard weather prediction models, for example.[5] The potential for sensitive dependence on initial conditions (the butterfly effect) has been studied in a number of cases in semiclassical and quantum physics including atoms in strong fields and the anisotropic Kepler problem.[6][7] Some authors have argued that extreme (exponential) dependence on initial conditions is not expected in pure quantum treatments;[8][9] however, the sensitive dependence on initial conditions demonstrated in classical motion is included in the semiclassical treatments developed by Martin Gutzwiller[10] and Delos and co-workers.[11] Other authors suggest that the butterfly effect can be observed in quantum systems. Karkuszewski et al. consider the time evolution of quantum systems which have slightly different Hamiltonians. They investigate the level of sensitivity of quantum systems to small changes in their given Hamiltonians.[12] Poulin et al. present a quantum algorithm to measure fidelity decay, which measures the rate at which identical initial states diverge when subjected to slightly different dynamics. They consider fidelity decay to be the closest quantum analog to the (purely classical) butterfly effect.[13] Whereas the classical butterfly effect considers the effect of a small change in the position and/or velocity of an object in a
References
[1] [2] [3] ^ Some Historical Notes: History of Chaos Theory Mathis, Nancy (2007). Storm Warning: The Story of a Killer Tornado. Touchstone. p. x. ISBN 0743280532. Lorenz, Edward N. (March 1963). "Deterministic Nonperiodic Flow". Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences 20 (2): 130141. Bibcode 1963JAtS...20..130L. doi:10.1175/ 1520-0469(1963)020<0130:DNF>2.0.CO;2. ISSN 1520-0469. http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/ abs/10.1175/ 1520-0469%281963%29020%3C0130%3ADNF%3E2.0.CO%3B2. Retrieved 3 June 2010. "The Butterfly Effects: Variations on a Meme". AP42 and everything. http://blog.ap42.com/2011/08/ 03/the-butterfly-effect-variations-on-a-meme/. Retrieved 3 August 2011. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/ 2005/11/chaos-and-climate/ Heller, E. J.; Tomsovic, S. (July 1993). "Postmodern Quantum Mechanics". Physics Today. Gutzwiller, Martin C. (1990). Chaos in Classical and Quantum Mechanics. New York: Springer-Verlag. ISBN 0387971734.
[4]
Butterfly effect
[14] ^ Poulin, David. "A Rough Guide to Quantum Chaos" (PDF). http://www.iqc.ca/publications/ tutorials/chaos.pdf. [15] Peres, A. (1995). Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. [16] Lee, Jae-Seung; Khitrin, A. K. (2004). "Quantum amplifier: Measurement with entangled spins". Journal of Chemical Physics 121 (9): 3949. Bibcode 2004JChPh.121.3949L. doi:10.1063/1.1788661.
[9]
[10]
Further reading
Devaney, Robert L. (2003). Introduction to Chaotic Dynamical Systems. Westview Press. ISBN 0813340853. Hilborn, Robert C. (2004). "Sea gulls, butterflies, and grasshoppers: A brief history of the butterfly effect in nonlinear dynamics". American Journal of Physics 72 (4): 425427. Bibcode 2004AmJPh..72..425H. doi:10.1119/1.1636492.
[11]
[12]
External links
The meaning of the butterfly: Why pop culture loves the butterfly effect, and gets it totally wrong, Peter Dizikes, Boston Globe, June 8, 2008 From butterfly wings to single e-mail (Cornell University) New England Complex Systems Institute - Concepts: Butterfly Effect The Chaos Hypertextbook. An introductory primer on chaos and fractals ChaosBook.org. Advanced graduate textbook on chaos (no fractals) Weisstein, Eric W., "Butterfly Effect" from MathWorld.
[13]
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect" Categories: Stability theory, Chaos theory, Physical phenomena, Metaphors referring to animals, Causality This page was last modified on 3 September 2011 at 15:51. Text is available under the Creative Commons AttributionShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details. Wikipedia is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.Contact us Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers Mobile view