Riccardo Meucci, senior associate at the National Institute of Optics, is among the authors of an important publication on multistability in Physics Letters A. Multistability is a typical phenomenon of nonlinear systems widely investigated not only in physics, but also in chemistry, biology (genetics and epigenetics) and in meteorology. Multistability consists in the fact that two or more solutions can coexist for the same values of the control parameters but with different initial conditions. The hypothesis is formulated in the work that multistability depends not only on the dissipation but also on the dimensions of the attractor in the phase space. This hypothesis was verified on two physical systems that have different dissipation properties. The first system is a chaotic laser where multistability was first observed at the National Institute of Optics 40 years ago. The second system is the Duffing oscillator in regions where chaotic attractors and periodic solutions coexist.

“Multistability and its dependence on the attractor volume”, M. Mehrabbeik, S. Jafari, J.-M. Ginoux, R. Meucci, Physics Letters A 485, (2023) 129088.

For more information  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physleta.2023.129088