Characterisation of intermittency in chaotic systems

Abstract

The authors discuss the characterisation of intermittency in chaotic dynamical systems by means of the time fluctuations of the response to a slight perturbation on the trajectory. A set of exponents is introduced which generalise the maximum Lyapunov characteristic exponent. The link with the statistical mechanics formalism is emphasised and they show that the exponents are connected to a free energy formally defined for chaotic systems. They perform some analytical computations in simple cases and give a few numerical examples.