The motion of systems with linear restoring forces
and recurring nonlinear perturbations is of central importance in physics:
when a system's natural oscillation frequencies and the frequency of the
nonlinear restoring forces satisfy certain algebraic relations,
the dynamics becomes resonant.
Such a resonant dynamics is of interest in a broad range of applications and
happens at any scale, from electron cyclotron resonances observed in plasma
physics [1] to condensed-matter physics [2] and to the
planetary motion of the solar system [3].
In accelerator physics [4], the understanding of resonances and nonlinear dynamics is
crucial to avoid particle loss.
Here, we report on an experiment performed at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS)
to investigate a second order
coupled resonance by measuring the position of a particle beam at
discrete locations around the accelerator.
Despite instrumental noise, we have constructed the ``Poincar\'e surface of section'' [5], which is described by the Arnold resonant tori [6], and found convincing
evidence of a ``fixed line structure'' generated by the resonance.