CHAOS IN A FRACTIONAL ORDER CHUAS SYSTEM

This brief studies the effects of fractional dynamics in chaotic syste ms. In particular, Chua's system is modified to include fractional ord er elements. By varying the total system order incrementally from 2.6 to 3.7, it is demonstrated that systems of ''order'' less than three c an exhibit chaos as well as other nonlinear behavior. This effectively forces a clarification of the definition of order which can no longer be considered only by the total number of differentiations or by the highest power of the Laplace variable.