Observation of a strange attractor

Abstract

Phase space portraits have been constructed and analyzed for noisy (nonperiodic) data obtained in an experiment on a nonequilibrium homogeneous chemical reaction. The phase space trajectories define a limit set that is an "attractor" - following a perturbation, the trajectory quickly returns to the attracting set. This attracting set is shown to be "strange" - nearby trajectories separate exponentially on the average. Moreover, the Poincaré sections exhibit the stretching and folding that is characteristic of strange attractors.