Attractor

1 Motivation

For other uses, see Attractor (disambiguation).

In the mathematical eld of dynamical systems, an at-

A dynamical system is generally described by one or

more dierential or dierence equations. The equations
of a given dynamical system specify its behavior over
any given short period of time. To determine the systems behavior for a longer period, it is often necessary
to integrate the equations, either through analytical means
or through iteration, often with the aid of computers.
Dynamical systems in the physical world tend to arise
from dissipative systems: if it were not for some driving
force, the motion would cease. (Dissipation may come
from internal friction, thermodynamic losses, or loss of
material, among many causes.) The dissipation and the
driving force tend to balance, killing o initial transients
and settle the system into its typical behavior. The subset
of the phase space of the dynamical system corresponding to the typical behavior is the attractor, also known
as the attracting section or attractee.

Visual representation of a strange attractor

Invariant sets and limit sets are similar to the attractor

concept. An invariant set is a set that evolves to itself under the dynamics. Attractors may contain invariant sets.
A limit set is a set of points such that there exists some
initial state that ends up arbitrarily close to the limit set
(i.e. to each point of the set) as time goes to innity. Attractors are limit sets, but not all limit sets are attractors:
It is possible to have some points of a system converge
to a limit set, but dierent points when perturbed slightly
o the limit set may get knocked o and never return to
the vicinity of the limit set.

tractor is a set of numerical values toward which a system

tends to evolve, for a wide variety of starting conditions of
the system.[1] System values that get close enough to the
attractor values remain close even if slightly disturbed.

In nite-dimensional systems, the evolving variable may

be represented algebraically as an n-dimensional vector.
The attractor is a region in n-dimensional space. In
physical systems, the n dimensions may be, for example, two or three positional coordinates for each of one
or more physical entities; in economic systems, they may
be separate variables such as the ination rate and the
For example, the damped pendulum has two invariant
unemployment rate.
points: the point x0 of minimum height and the point
If the evolving variable is two- or three-dimensional,
x of maximum height. The point x0 is also a limit set,
the attractor of the dynamic process can be represented 1
as trajectories converge to it; the point x1 is not a limit
geometrically in two or three dimensions, (as for example
set. Because of the dissipation, the point x0 is also an atin the three-dimensional case depicted to the right). An
tractor. If there were no dissipation, x0 would not be an
attractor can be a point, a nite set of points, a curve, a
attractor.
manifold, or even a complicated set with a fractal structure known as a strange attractor. If the variable is a
scalar, the attractor is a subset of the real number line.
Describing the attractors of chaotic dynamical systems 2 Mathematical denition
has been one of the achievements of chaos theory.
A trajectory of the dynamical system in the attractor does
not have to satisfy any special constraints except for remaining on the attractor, forward in time. The trajectory
may be periodic or chaotic. If a set of points is periodic
or chaotic, but the ow in the neighborhood is away from
the set, the set is not an attractor, but instead is called a
repeller (or repellor).

Let t represent time and let f(t, ) be a function which

species the dynamics of the system. That is, if a is an ndimensional point in the phase space, representing the initial state of the system, then f(0, a) = a and, for a positive
value of t, f(t, a) is the result of the evolution of this state
after t units of time. For example, if the system describes
the evolution of a free particle in one dimension then the
1

3 TYPES OF ATTRACTORS

phase space is the plane R2 with coordinates (x,v), where Many other denitions of attractor occur in the literax is the position of the particle, v is its velocity, a=(x,v), ture. For example, some authors require that an attracand the evolution is given by
tor have positive measure (preventing a point from being
an attractor), others relax the requirement that B(A) be a
neighborhood [2]

3 Types of attractors
Attractors are portions or subsets of the phase space of a
dynamic system. Until the 1960s, attractors were thought
of as being simple geometric subsets of the phase space,
like points, lines, surfaces, and simple regions of threedimensional space. More complex attractors that cannot be categorized as simple geometric subsets, such as
topologically wild sets, were known of at the time but
were thought to be fragile anomalies. Stephen Smale was
able to show that his horseshoe map was robust and that
its attractor had the structure of a Cantor set.

Attracting period-3 cycle and its immediate basin of attraction

for a certain parametrization of f(z) = z2 + c. The three darkest
points are the points of the 3-cycle, which lead to each other in
sequence, and iteration from any point in the basin of attraction
leads to (usually asymptotic) convergence to this sequence of three
points.

Two simple attractors are a xed point and the limit

cycle. Attractors can take on many other geometric
shapes (phase space subsets). But when these sets (or
the motions within them) cannot be easily described
as simple combinations (e.g. intersection and union)
of fundamental geometric objects (e.g. lines, surfaces,
spheres, toroids, manifolds), then the attractor is called a
strange attractor.

3.1 Fixed point

f (t, (x, v)) = (x + tv, v).
An attractor is a subset A of the phase space characterized by the following three conditions:
A is forward invariant under f: if a is an element of
A then so is f(t,a), for all t > 0.
There exists a neighborhood of A, called the basin
of attraction for A and denoted B(A), which consists of all points b that enter A in the limit t ".
More formally, B(A) is the set of all points b in the Weakly attracting xed point for a complex number evolving acphase space with the following property:
cording to a complex quadratic polynomial. The phase space is
For any open neighborhood N of A,
there is a positive constant T such
that f(t,b) N for all real t > T.

the horizontal complex plane; the vertical axis measures the frequency with which points in the complex plane are visited. The
point in the complex plane directly below the peak frequency is
the xed point attractor.

A xed point of a function or transformation is a point

There is no proper (non-empty) subset of A having that is mapped to itself by the function or transformathe rst two properties.
tion. If we regard the evolution of a dynamical system as
a series of transformations, then there may or may not be
Since the basin of attraction contains an open set contain- a point which remains xed under each transformation.
ing A, every point that is suciently close to A is attracted The nal state that a dynamical system evolves towards
to A. The denition of an attractor uses a metric on the corresponds to an attracting xed point of the evolution
phase space, but the resulting notion usually depends only function for that system, such as the center bottom posion the topology of the phase space. In the case of Rn , the tion of a damped pendulum, the level and at water line
of sloshing water in a glass, or the bottom center of a bowl
Euclidean norm is typically used.

3.5

Strange attractor

contain a rolling marble. But the xed point(s) of a dynamic system is not necessarily an attractor of the system.
For example, if the bowl containing a rolling marble was
inverted and the marble was balanced on top of the bowl,
the center bottom (now top) of the bowl is a xed state,
but not an attractor. This is equivalent to the dierence
between stable and unstable equilibria. In the case of a
marble on top of an inverted bowl (a hill), that point at
the top of the bowl (hill) is a xed point (equilibrium),
but not an attractor (stable equilibrium).
In addition, physical dynamic systems with at least one
xed point invariably have multiple xed points and attractors due to the reality of dynamics in the physical world, including the nonlinear dynamics of stiction,
friction, surface roughness, deformation (both elastic and
plasticity), and even quantum mechanics.[3] In the case
of a marble on top of an inverted bowl, even if the bowl
seems perfectly hemispherical, and the marbles spherical
shape, are both much more complex surfaces when examined under a microscope, and their shapes change or
deform during contact. Any physical surface can be seen
to have a rough terrain of multiple peaks, valleys, saddle points, ridges, ravines, and plains.[4] There are many
points in this surface terrain (and the dynamic system
of a similarly rough marble rolling around on this microscopic terrain) that are considered stationary or xed
points, some of which are categorized as attractors.

3.2

the rate at which a planet orbits a star while a second

frequency describes the oscillations in the distance between the two bodies. If two of these frequencies form
an irrational fraction (i.e. they are incommensurate), the
trajectory is no longer closed, and the limit cycle becomes
a limit torus. This kind of attractor is called an N -torus
if there are N incommensurate frequencies. For example
here is a 2-torus:

Finite number of points

In a discrete-time system, an attractor can take the form

of a nite number of points that are visited in sequence.
Each of these points is called a periodic point. This is
illustrated by the logistic map, which depending on its
specic parameter value can have an attractor consisting
of 2n points, 32n points, etc., for any value of n.

3.3

Van der Pol phase portrait: an attracting limit cycle

Limit cycle
See main article limit cycle

A limit cycle is a periodic orbit of the system that is

isolated. Examples include the swings of a pendulum
clock, the tuning circuit of a radio, and the heartbeat
while resting. (The limit cycle of an ideal pendulum is
not an example of a limit cycle attractor because its orbits
are not isolated: in the phase space of the ideal pendulum,
near any point of a periodic orbit there is another point
that belongs to a dierent periodic orbit, so the former
orbit is not attracting).

A time series corresponding to this attractor is a

quasiperiodic series: A discretely sampled sum of N periodic functions (not necessarily sine waves) with incommensurate frequencies. Such a time series does not have
a strict periodicity, but its power spectrum still consists
only of sharp lines.

3.5 Strange attractor

An attractor is called strange if it has a fractal structure.

This is often the case when the dynamics on it are chaotic,
but strange nonchaotic attractors also exist. If a strange
attractor is chaotic, exhibiting sensitive dependence on
initial conditions, then any two arbitrarily close alternative initial points on the attractor, after any of various
numbers of iterations, will lead to points that are arbitrarily far apart (subject to the connes of the attractor),
3.4 Limit torus
and after any of various other numbers of iterations will
There may be more than one frequency in the periodic lead to points that are arbitrarily close together. Thus a
trajectory of the system through the state of a limit cy- dynamic system with a chaotic attractor is locally unstacle. For example, in physics, one frequency may dictate ble yet globally stable: once some sequences have entered

5 BASINS OF ATTRACTION
A particular functional form of a dynamic equation can
have various types of attractor depending on the particular parameter values used in the function. An example
is the well-studied logistic map, xt+1 = rxt (1 xt ),
whose basins of attraction for various values of the parameter r are shown in the diagram. At some values of
the parameter the attractor is a single point, at others it is
two points that are visited in turn, at others it is 2n points
or k 2n points that are visited in turn, for any value of
n depending on the value of the parameter r, and at other
values of r an innitude of points are visited.

5 Basins of attraction
An attractors basin of attraction is the region of the
phase space, over which iterations are dened, such that
any point (any initial condition) in that region will evenA plot of Lorenzs strange attractor for values =28, = 10, tually be iterated into the attractor. For a stable linear
= 8/3
system, every point in the phase space is in the basin of
attraction. However, in nonlinear systems, some points
the attractor, nearby points diverge from one another but may map directly or asymptotically to innity, while other
points may lie in a dierent basin of attraction and map
never depart from the attractor.
asymptotically into a dierent attractor; other initial conThe term strange attractor was coined by David Ruditions may be in or map directly into a non-attracting
elle and Floris Takens to describe the attractor resulting
point or cycle.
from a series of bifurcations of a system describing uid
ow.[5] Strange attractors are often dierentiable in a few
directions, but some are like a Cantor dust, and therefore 5.1 Linear equation or system
not dierentiable. Strange attractors may also be found in
presence of noise, where they may be shown to support A single-variable (univariate) linear dierence equation
invariant random probability measures of Sinai-Ruelle- of the homogeneous form x = ax
t
t1 diverges to innBowen type.[6]
ity if |a| > 1 from all initial points except 0; there is no
Examples of strange attractors include the double-scroll attractor and therefore no basin of attraction. But if |a|
attractor, Hnon attractor, Rssler attractor, Tamari at- < 1 all points on the number line map asymptotically (or
directly in the case of 0) to 0; 0 is the attractor, and the
tractor, and the Lorenz attractor.
entire number line is the basin of attraction.

Eect of parameters on the attractor

Bifurcation diagram of the logistic map. The attractor for any

value of the parameter r is shown on the vertical line at that r.

Likewise, a linear matrix dierence equation in a dynamic vector X, of the homogeneous form Xt = AXt1
in terms of square matrix A will have all elements of the
dynamic vector diverge to innity if the largest eigenvalue
of A is greater than 1 in absolute value; there is no attractor and no basin of attraction. But if the largest eigenvalue is less than 1 in magnitude, all initial vectors will
asymptotically converge to the zero vector, which is the
attractor; the entire n-dimensional space of potential initial vectors is the basin of attraction.
Similar features apply to linear dierential equations.
The scalar equation dx/dt = ax causes all initial values of x except zero to diverge to innity if a > 0 but to
converge to an attractor at the value 0 if a < 0, making the
entire number line the basin of attraction for 0. And the
matrix system dX/dt = AX gives divergence from all
initial points except the vector of zeroes if any eigenvalue
of the matrix A is positive; but if all the eigenvalues are
negative the vector of zeroes is an attractor whose basin
of attraction is the entire phase space.

5.2

Nonlinear equation or system

Equations or systems that are nonlinear can give rise to a

richer variety of behavior than can linear systems. One
example is Newtons method of iterating to a root of a
nonlinear expression. If the expression has more than one
real root, some starting points for the iterative algorithm
will lead to one of the roots asymptotically, and other
starting points will lead to another. The basins of attraction for the expressions roots are generally not simple
it is not simply that the points nearest one root all map
there, giving a basin of attraction consisting of nearby
points. The basins of attraction can be innite in number and arbitrarily small. For example,[7] for the function
f (x) = x3 2x2 11x + 12 , the following initial conditions are in successive basins of attraction:

6 Partial dierential equations

Parabolic partial dierential equations may have nitedimensional attractors. The diusive part of the equation damps higher frequencies and in some cases leads to
a global attractor. The GinzburgLandau, the Kuramoto
Sivashinsky, and the two-dimensional, forced Navier
Stokes equations are all known to have global attractors
of nite dimension.
For the three-dimensional, incompressible Navier
Stokes equation with periodic boundary conditions, if it
has a global attractor, then this attractor will be of nite
dimensions.

7 Numerical localization (visualization) of attractors: selfexcited and hidden attractors

Basins of attraction in the complex plane for x5 - 1 = 0. Points

in like-colored regions map to the same root; darker means more
iterations are needed to converge.

2.35287527 converges to 4;
2.35284172 converges to 3;
2.35283735 converges to 4;
2.352836327 converges to 3;
2.352836323 converges to 1.
Newtons method can also be applied to complex functions to nd their roots. Each root has a basin of attraction in the complex plane; these basins can be mapped
as in the image shown. As can be seen, the combined
basin of attraction for a particular root can have many
disconnected regions. For many complex functions, the
boundaries of the basins of attraction are fractals.

Chaotic hidden attractor (green domain) in Chuas system. Trajectories with initial data in a neighborhood of two saddle points
(blue) tend (red arrow) to innity or tend (black arrow) to stable
zero equilibrium point (orange).

From a computational point of view, attractors can be

naturally regarded as self-excited attractors or hidden attractors.[8][9][10][11] Self-excited attractors can be localized numerically by standard computational procedures,
in which after a transient sequence, a trajectory starting
from a point on an unstable manifold in a small neighborhood of an unstable equilibrium reaches an attractor
(like classical attractors in the Van der Pol, Belousov
Zhabotinsky, Lorenz, and many other dynamical systems). In contrast, the basin of attraction of a hidden attractor does not contain neighborhoods of equilibria, so

11

EXTERNAL LINKS

the hidden attractor cannot be localized by standard com- [11] Leonov G.A., Kuznetsov N.V. (2013). Hidden attractors in dynamical systems. From hidden oscillations in
putational procedures.

See also
Cycle detection
Hyperbolic set

10 Further reading

Stable manifold

Attractor at Scholarpedia, curated by John Milnor.

Steady state

David Ruelle and Floris Takens (1971). On

the nature of turbulence.
Communications
of Mathematical Physics 20 (3):
167192.
doi:10.1007/BF01646553.

Wada basin
Hidden oscillation

Hilbert-Kolmogorov, Aizerman, and Kalman problems

to hidden chaotic attractor in Chua circuits. International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos 23 (1): art. no.
1330002. doi:10.1142/S0218127413300024.

References

[1] http://www.thefreedictionary.com/attractor
[2] Milnor, J. (1985). On the Concept of Attractor. Comm.
Math. Phys 99: 177-195.
[3] Greenwood, J. A.; J. B. P. Williamson (6 December
1966). Contact of Nominally Flat Surfaces. Proceedings of the Royal Society 295 (1442): 300319.
doi:10.1098/rspa.1966.0242. Retrieved 31 March 2013.
[4] Vorberger, T. V. (1990). Surface Finish Metrology Tutorial (PDF). U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards (NIST). p. 5.
[5] Ruelle, David; Takens, Floris (1971). On the nature of
turbulence. Communications in Mathematical Physics 20
(3): 167192. doi:10.1007/bf01646553.
[6] Chekroun M. D., Simonnet E., and Ghil M. (2011).
Stochastic climate dynamics: Random attractors and
time-dependent invariant measures. Physica D. 240 (21):
16851700. doi:10.1016/j.physd.2011.06.005.
[7] Dence, Thomas, Cubics, chaos and Newtons method,
Mathematical Gazette 81, November 1997, 403-408.
[8] Leonov G.A., Vagaitsev V.I., Kuznetsov N.V.
(2011). Localization of hidden Chuas attractors
(PDF). Physics Letters A 375 (23): 22302233.
doi:10.1016/j.physleta.2011.04.037.
[9] Bragin V.O., Vagaitsev V.I., Kuznetsov N.V., Leonov
G.A. (2011). Algorithms for Finding Hidden Oscillations in Nonlinear Systems. The Aizerman and Kalman
Conjectures and Chuas Circuits (PDF). Journal of Computer and Systems Sciences International 50 (5): 511543.
doi:10.1134/S106423071104006X.
[10] Leonov G.A., Vagaitsev V.I., Kuznetsov N.V.
(2012).
Hidden attractor in smooth Chua systems (PDF). Physica D 241 (18): 14821486.
doi:10.1016/j.physd.2012.05.016.

D. Ruelle (1981). Small random perturbations of

dynamical systems and the denition of attractors.
Communications of Mathematical Physics 82: 137
151. doi:10.1007/BF01206949.
John Milnor (1985). On the concept of attractor. Communications of Mathematical Physics 99
(2): 177195. doi:10.1007/BF01212280.
David Ruelle (1989). Elements of Dierentiable
Dynamics and Bifurcation Theory. Academic Press.
ISBN 0-12-601710-7.
Ruelle, David (August 2006). What is...a Strange
Attractor?" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society 53 (7): 764765. Retrieved 16 January 2008.
Grebogi, Ott, Pelikan, Yorke (1984). Strange attractors that are not chaotic. Physica D 13: 261
268. doi:10.1016/0167-2789(84)90282-3.
Chekroun, M. D., E. Simonnet, and M. Ghil
(2011).
Stochastic climate dynamics: Random attractors and time-dependent invariant measures.
Physica D. 240 (21): 16851700.
doi:10.1016/j.physd.2011.06.005.
Edward N. Lorenz (1996) The Essence of Chaos
ISBN 0-295-97514-8
James Gleick (1988) Chaos: Making a New Science
ISBN 0-14-009250-1

11 External links
Basin of attraction on Scholarpedia
A gallery of trigonometric strange attractors
Double scroll attractor Chuas circuit simulation
A gallery of polynomial strange attractors
Animated Pickover Strange Attractors

7
Chaoscope, a 3D Strange Attractor rendering freeware
Research abstract and software laboratory
Online strange attractors generator
Interactive trigonometric attractors generator
Economic attractor

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TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

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Attractor Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractor?oldid=692966813 Contributors: The Anome, Tarquin, Lisiate, Stevertigo,

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