Abstract
Chaotic processes have the property that relatively small numerical errors tend to grow exponentially fast. In an iterated process, if errors double each iterate and numerical calculations have 50-bit (or 15-digit) accuracy, a true orbit through a point can be expected to have no correlation with a numerical orbit after 50 iterates. On the other hand, numerical studies often involve hundreds of thousands of iterates. One may therefore question the validity of such studies. A relevant result in this regard is that of Anosov and Bowen who showed that systems which are uniformly hyperbolic will have the shadowing property: a numerical (or noisy) orbit will stay close to (shadow) a true orbit for all time. Unfortunately, chaotic processes typically studied do not have the requisite uniform hyperbolicity, and the Anosov-Bowen result does not apply. We report rigorous results for nonhyperbolic systems: numerical orbits typically can be shadowed by true orbits for long time periods.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 136-145 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | Journal of Complexity |
Volume | 3 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Jun 1987 |