USE OF HYSTERESIS IN BIFURCATION SYSTEMS TO MEASURE NOISE

It is proposed to make use of the influence of noise on the delay in d ynamic bifurcations to measure the level of weak intrinsic noise in no nlinear chaotic systems. The dependence of the size of the hysteresis loop on the rate of change of the control parameter and on the noise l evel in a system described by a logistic map is found. A calibration c urve for determining the noise level from measured values of the size of the hysteresis loop is obtained. (C) 1997 American Institute of Phy sics.