Existence of a Singularly Degenerate Heteroclinic Cycle in the Lorenz System and Its Dynamical Consequences: Part I

We prove that the Lorenz system with appropriate choice of parameter values has a specific type of heteroclinic cycle, called a singularly degenerate heteroclinic cycle, that consists of a line of equilibria together with a heteroclinic orbit connecting two of the equilibria. By an arbitrarily small but carefully chosen perturbation to the Lorenz system, we also show that the geometric model of Lorenz attractors formulated by Guckenheimer will bifurcate from it, among other things. Although not proven, one may also expect various other types of chaotic dynamics such as Hénon-like chaotic attractors, Lorenz attractors with hooks which were recently studied by S. Luzzatto and M. Viana [22], and what were observed in the original Lorenz system with large r and small b in the Sparrow’s book [34]. Our analysis is all done within a family of three dimensional ODEs that contains, as its subfamilies, the Lorenz system, the Rössler’s second system and the Shimizu–Morioka system, which are known to exhibit Lorenz-like chaotic dynamics.

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