Noise in nonlinear dynamical systems

Abstract

Abstract Noise is commonly regarded as having a destructive but relatively innocuous effect, blurring our view of a system but having no effect on the underlying processes involved. In this paper we show, using examples from stochastic nonlinear dynamics, that these intuitive ideas about noise can be very misleading. For example, an effect known as stochastic resonance means that the addition of extra noise to a system can actually improve the signal-to-noise ratio.