ABSTRACT
Systems that are out-of-equilibrium and in the nonlinear regime may have the property of exhibiting chaotic dynamics. Chaotic dynamics are aperiodic and extremely sensitive to the initial conditions. Their sensitivity to the initial conditions is so high that chaotic dynamics are unpredictable in the long term, by definition. This chapter illustrates the features of Chaos by describing the dynamics of the double pendulum, the evolution of a population according to the logistic equation, and the widespread phenomenon of convection. These examples demonstrate that chaos and self-organization are two faces of the same coin: The coin of the nonlinearity. The thermodynamic analysis of the convection phenomenon suggests that, most likely, the nonlinear regime is governed by the principle of the Maximum Entropy Production (MaxEP). Some algorithms allow distinguishing chaotic from stochastic time series, and there exist many attempts at predicting chaotic time series. Chaotic dynamics are not just curious scientific phenomena to study, but they are rich sources of dynamical behaviors that can be mastered and exploited in many fields, for instance, in information technology, wherein alluring scenarios of chaos-communication and computation are outlining.
