Bicritical scaling behavior in unidirectionally coupled oscillators

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2001 Mar;63(3 Pt 2):036223. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.63.036223. Epub 2001 Feb 27.

Abstract

We study the scaling behavior of period doublings in a system of two unidirectionally coupled parametrically forced pendulums near a bicritical point where two critical lines of period-doubling transition to chaos in both subsystems meet. When crossing a bicritical point, a hyperchaotic attractor with two positive Lyapunov exponents appears, i.e., a transition to hyperchaos occurs. Varying the control parameters of the two subsystems, the unidirectionally coupled parametrically forced pendulums exhibit multiple period-doubling transitions to hyperchaos. For each transition to hyperchaos, using both a "residue-matching" renormalization group method and a direct numerical method, we make an analysis of the bicritical scaling behavior. It is thus found that the second response subsystem exhibits a new type of non-Feigenbaum scaling behavior, while the first drive subsystem is in the usual Feigenbaum critical state. The universality of the bicriticality is also examined for several different types of unidirectional couplings.