@article{MedranoTBaptistaCaldas2006, author = {Medrano-T., R. O. and Baptista, Murilo da Silva and Caldas, Ibere Luiz}, title = {Shilnikov homoclinic orbit bifurcations in the Chua's circuit}, series = {Chaos : an interdisciplinary journal of nonlinear science}, volume = {16}, journal = {Chaos : an interdisciplinary journal of nonlinear science}, number = {4}, publisher = {American Institute of Physics}, address = {Melville}, issn = {1054-1500}, doi = {10.1063/1.2401060}, pages = {9}, year = {2006}, abstract = {We analytically describe the complex scenario of homoclinic bifurcations in the Chua's circuit. We obtain a general scaling law that gives the ratio between bifurcation parameters of different nearby homoclinic orbits. As an application of this theoretical approach, we estimate the number of higher order subsidiary homoclinic orbits that appear between two consecutive lower order subsidiary orbits. Our analytical finds might be valid for a large class of dynamical systems and are numerically confirmed in the parameter space of the Chua's circuit. Shilnikov homoclinic orbits are trajectories that depart from a fixed saddle-focus point, with specific eigenvalues, and return to it after an infinite amount of time (that is also true to time reversal evolution). That results in an orbit that is unstable and has an infinite period. These two main characteristics contribute in the hardness for its observation in a dynamical system as well as in nature. However, its presence reveals fundamental characteristics of the system involved, as the existence of unstable periodic orbits embedded in a chaotic set. Once the unstable periodic orbits give invariants quantities of this set,1 the Shilnikov homoclinic orbits are also related to the characteristics of the chaotic set. Their connection with the fundamental dynamical properties is verified in a wide variety of systems. A series of numerical and experimental investigations reveal how Shilnikov homoclinic orbits, in the vicinity of a chaotic attractor, determine its dynamical and topological properties.4 Thus, the Shilnikov orbits are related to the returning time of the trajectory of a CO2 laser,5 also to the topology of a glow-discharge system.6 Moreover, some class of spiking neurons are modeled by chaos governed by such orbits,7,8 and their presence are connected to the intermittence present in rabbit arteries.9 These orbits are shown to be behind the mechanism of noise-induced phenomena,10 and they are also responsible for the dynamics of an electrochemical oscillator.11 In this work, we contribute to the understanding of how Shilnikov homoclinic orbits appear on the parameter space of systems as the ones above mentioned, by showing that these orbits are not only distributed following an universal rule but also exist for large parameter variations. We then confirm our previsions in the Chua's circuit system}, language = {en} }