Dynamics of the Muthuswamy-Chua System

The Muthuswamy–Chua system describes the simplest electronic circuit which can have chaotic phenomena. In this paper, we first prove the existence of three families of consecutive periodic orbits of the system when α = 0, two of which are located on consecutive invariant surfaces and form two invariant topological cylinders. Then we prove that for α > 0 if the system has a periodic orbit or a chaotic attractor, it must intersect both of the planes z = 0 and z = -1 infinitely many times as t tends to infinity. As a byproduct, we get an example of unstable invariant topological cylinders which are not normally hyperbolic and which are also destroyed under small perturbations.