Metamorphosis of chaotic saddle

Chaotic saddles are nonattracting dynamical invariant sets that can lead to a variety of physical phenomena. We report our finding and analysis of a type of discontinuous global bifurcation (metamorphosis) of chaotic saddle that occurs in high-dimensional chaotic systems with an invariant manifold. A metamorphosis occurs when a chaotic saddle, lying in the manifold, loses stability with respect to perturbations transverse to the invariant manifold. The fractal dimension of the chaotic saddle increases abruptly through the bifurcation, We illustrate our finding by using a system of coupled maps. (C) 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V, All rights reserved.