Abstract

Since time delays are inevitable in real systems, it is important to clarify the roles played by time delays in dynamics. We apply information theory and dimension analysis to analyze the chaotic self-switching time series resulting from a symmetry-recovering crisis in a coupled optical bistable system.¹ Information flows embedding in complex time series are determined. Information transport shows novel structure for the time series with the characteristics of memory loss and recovery. Delay-induced effects on mutual information are investigated. High mutual information region within chaotic “sea”, which usually results in a pretty low mutual information, has been found. Unlike previous work on Mackey-Glass equation,² our result suggests that more time delays are not necessarily increasing the dimension of attractor. Mutual information between individual outputs of the attractor with a smaller dimension can have either higher or lower mutual information. This work is supported by the National Science Council, ROC.

© 1993 Optical Society of America