DEPENDENCE OF LIFETIMES OF CHAOTIC TRANSIENTS IN THE WEAKLY DISSIPATIVE DUFFING OSCILLATOR ON NUMERICAL PRECISION AND EXTERNAL NOISE

A numerical experiment was performed for a distribution of lifetimes o f chaotic transients in the weakly dissipative single-well Duffing osc illator. It is shown that the results of computations with a uniform d istribution of precision of numerical algorithm at a fixed initial con dition cannot be distinguished from the well-known exponential distrib ution of lifetimes computed with an uniform distribution of initial co nditions at fixed numerical precision. The same exponential distributi on of lifetimes is also obtained if a noise term is added to the drivi ng force in the fixed precision case.