VISUALIZING BIFURCATIONS IN HIGH DIMENSIONAL SYSTEMS: THE SPECTRAL BIFURCATION DIAGRAM
This paper presents methods to visualize bifurcations in flows of nonlinear dynamical systems, using the Lorenz '96 systems as examples. Three techniques are considered; the first two, density and max/min diagrams, are analagous to the bifurcation diagrams used for maps, which indicate how the system's behavior changes with a control parameter. However the diagrams are generally harder to interpret than the corresponding diagrams of maps, due to the continuous nature of the flow. The third technique takes an alternative approach: by calculating the power spectrum at each value of the control parameter, a plot is produced which clearly shows the changes between periodic, quasi-periodic, and chaotic states, and reveals structure not shown by the other methods.