
S TA B LE M ANIFOLDS AND C RISES
distinct chaotic attractors, which approach each other in (b) (overlapping only
in the two-dimensional projection), and then merge in (c). Due to symmetries in
the system, this crisis is similar to the interior crisis of the H
´
enon family shown
in Figure 10.17. A boundary crisis follows, where the chaotic (double scroll)
attractor moves into the basin of a periodic attractor, as shown in (d).
One-dimensional families can also undergo crises as a parameter is varied.
See, for example, Figure 6.3(a), the bifurcation diagram of the logistic family.
(Several other bifurcation diagrams appear in Chapters 11 and 12.) Chaotic
attractors are observed to jump in size or suddenly appear or disappear. For one-
dimensional maps, basin boundary points are repelling fixed points or periodic
points or pre-images of these points. Interior and boundary crises occur as an
attractor collides with a repelling fixed point or periodic orbit. For example, in
the logistic family g
a
(x) ⫽ ax(1 ⫺ x), 1 ⱕ a ⱕ 4, the points x ⫽ 0andx ⫽ 1
form the boundary between points with bounded orbits and those in the basin
of infinity. At a ⫽ 4 the chaotic attractor has grown to fill the unit interval and
contains these boundary points. For a ⬎ 4, there are no (finite) attractors. Thus
there is a boundary crisis at a ⫽ 4.
10.4 PROOF OF THE STABLE
MANIFOLD THEOREM
A fixed-point saddle of a planar diffeomorphism has a stable manifold and an
unstable manifold, which are smooth one-dimensional curves (that is, one-
manifolds). In this section we prove that the stable manifold is a one-dimensional
curve, although we do not discuss its smoothness. The proof of smoothness is rather
technical and is not within the scope of this book. We direct the interested reader
to (Devaney, 1986). The existence of the unstable manifold as a one-dimensional
curve follows by applying the result to the inverse of the map.
Recall that a point v ⫽ (x
1
,x
2
) is in the stable manifold of a fixed point p ⫽
(p
1
,p
2
)iff
n
(v) → p as n →
⬁
. As Figure 10.21 illustrates, given a neighborhood
B of p, the stable manifold may enter and leave B many times. In fact, when there
is a homoclinic point, the stable manifold S (p) intersects B in infinitely many
pieces. We focus on the one piece of the intersection which contains p, and call
this (connected) piece the local stable manifold of p in B. We will show in the
proof of the Stable Manifold Theorem that there exists a neighborhood B such
422