Two routes to chaos in the fractional Lorenz system with dimension continuously varying

The object of this paper is to reveal the relation between dynamics of the fractional system and its dimension defined as a sum of the orders of all involved derivatives. We take the fractional Lorenz system as example and regard one or three of its orders as bifurcation parameters. In this framework, we compute the corresponding bifurcation diagrams via an optimal Poincaré section technique developed by us and find there exist two routes to chaos when its dimension increases from some values to 3. One is the process of cascaded period-doubling bifurcations and the other is a crisis (boundary crisis) which occurs in the evolution of chaotic transient behavior. We would like to point out that our investigation is the first to find out that a fractional differential equations (FDEs) system can evolve into chaos by the crisis. Furthermore, we observe rich dynamical phenomena in these processes, such as two-stage cascaded period-doubling bifurcations, chaotic transients, and the transition from coexistence of three attractors to mono-existence of a chaotic attractor. These are new and interesting findings for FDEs systems which, to our knowledge, have not been described before.