Computer-assisted proof of shear-induced chaos in stochastically perturbed Hopf systems

Abstract

We confirm a long-standing conjecture concerning shear-induced chaos in stochastically perturbed systems exhibiting a Hopf bifurcation. The method of showing the main chaotic property, a positive Lyapunov exponent, is a computer-assisted proof. Using the recently developed theory of conditioned Lyapunov exponents on bounded domains and the modified Furstenberg-Khasminskii formula, the problem boils down to the rigorous computation of eigenfunctions of the Kolmogorov operators describing distributions of the underlying stochastic process.