Sensitive dependence on parameters of continuous-time nonlinear dynamical systems

The sensitive dependence of periodicity and chaos on parameters is investigated for three-dimensional nonlinear dynamical systems. Previous works have found that noninvertible low-dimensional maps present power-law exponents relating the uncertainty between periodicity and chaos to the precision on the system parameters. Furthermore, the values obtained for these exponents have been conjectured to be universal in these maps. However, confirmation of the observed exponent values in continuous-time systems remain an open question. In this work, we show that one of these exponents can also be found in different classes of three-dimensional continuous-time dynamical systems, suggesting that the sensitive dependence on parameters of deterministic nonlinear dynamical systems is typical.