Ultra-Chaos in the Motion of Walking Droplet

Abstract

A liquid bath vibrating vertically can lead to the emergence of a self-propelled walking droplet on its free surface, which can exhibit chaotic motion. It is well-known that trajectories of a chaotic system are sensitive to its initial condition, known as the “butterfly-effect”, while its statistics normally remain stable to small disturbances: this type of chaos is called “normal-chaos”. However, a concept called “ultra-chaos” has been recently introduced, whose statistical features are unstable, i.e. extremely sensitive to small disturbances. Up to now, a few examples of ultra-chaos have been reported. In this paper, the influence of tiny disturbances on the motion of walking droplet is investigated. It is found that both normal-chaos and ultra-chaos exist in the motion of the walking droplet. Different from the normal-chaotic motion, even the statistical properties of the droplet’s ultra-chaotic motion are sensitive to tiny disturbances. Therefore, this illustrates once again that ultra-chaos indeed exists widely and represents a higher disorder compared with normal-chaos. The ultra-chaos as a new concept can widen our knowledge about chaos and provide us with a new point of view to study chaotic properties. It should be emphasized that, for an ultra-chaos, it is impossible to repeat any results of its physical experiments or numerical simulations even in the meaning of statistics! Unfortunately, reproducibility is a corner stone of modern science. Thus, the paradigm of modern scientific research might be invalid for an ultra-chaotic system.