OBSERVATION OF THE CONCURRENT CREATION AND ANNIHILATION OF PERIODIC-ORBITS IN A NONLINEAR RLC CIRCUIT

We have numerically investigated and experimentally demonstrated the p resence of antimonotonicity: the concurrent creation and destruction o f periodic orbits in a driven nonlinear RLC circuit. A simple manifest ation of antimonotonicity is the formation of dimples in a high iterat e return map. The evolution of such dimples allows for both contact ma king and contact breaking homoclinic tangencies of the stable and unst able manifolds. Both numerical and experimental return maps unequivoca lly exhibit the formation of such dimples. The experimental time serie s were captured using a 16-bit resolution digitizer allowing for a fai thful computation of the high iterate return maps.