ABSTRACT
From a computational point of view, an oscillation is called an attractor and its attracting set is called a basin of attraction. An attractor is called a self-excited attractor if its basin of attraction intersects with any open neighborhood of equilibrium; otherwise it is called a hidden attractor. For a self-excited attractor, its basin of attraction is connected with an unstable equilibrium and, therefore, self-excited attractors can be localized numerically by the standard computational procedure. For a hidden attractor, its basin of attraction is not connected with any equilibria. Coexisting self-excited attractors can be found by the standard computational procedure while there is no effective regular way to predict the existence or coexistence of hidden attractors in a system. The study of hidden attractors arises in connection with various fundamental problems and applied models. After the notion “hidden attractor” was introduced and the first hidden Chua attractor was discovered, the study of hidden attractors has received much attention.
