Experimental characterization of transition to chaos in the presence of noise

Phys Rev Lett. 2003 Apr 25;90(16):164101. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.164101. Epub 2003 Apr 23.

Abstract

Transition to chaos in the presence of noise is an important problem in nonlinear and statistical physics. Recently, a scaling law has been theoretically predicted which relates the Lyapunov exponent to the noise variation near the transition. Here we present experimental observation of noise-induced chaos in an electronic circuit and obtain the fundamental scaling law characterizing the transition. The experimentally obtained scaling exponent agrees very well with that predicted by theory.