Period Doubling and Chaotic Behavior in a Driven Anharmonic Oscillator

Abstract

A driven anharmonic oscillator is described which exhibits period doubling and chaotic behavior. The measured behavior of the oscillator under successive period doublings is in quantitative agreement with a recent theory which describes the behavior of nonlinear systems. Both the scaling and the convergence rate predicted by the theory are verified by the experiment. The oscillator also exhibits period tripling and quintupling.