Non-hyperbolicity at large scales of a high-dimensional chaotic system

Abstract

Many important high-dimensional dynamical systems exhibit complex chaotic behaviour. Their complexity means that their dynamics are necessarily comprehended under strong reducing assumptions. It is therefore important to have a clear picture of these reducing assumptions' range of validity. The highly influential chaotic hypothesis of Gallavotti and Cohen states that the large-scale dynamics of high-dimensional systems are effectively hyperbolic, which implies many felicitous statistical properties. We demonstrate, contrary to the chaotic hypothesis, the existence of non-hyperbolic large-scale dynamics in a mean-field coupled system. To do this we reduce the system to its thermodynamic limit, which we approximate numerically with a Chebyshev Galerkin transfer operator discretisation. This enables us to obtain a high precision estimate of a homoclinic tangency, implying a failure of hyperbolicity. Robust nonhyperbolic behaviour is expected under perturbation. As a result, the chaotic hypothesis should not be assumed to hold in all systems, and a better understanding of the domain of its validity is required.