Dissecting a resonance wedge on heteroclinic bifurcations

Abstract: This article studies routes to chaos occurring within a resonance wedge for a 3-parametric family of differential equations acting on a 3-sphere. Our starting point is an autonomous vector field whose flow exhibits a weakly attracting heteroclinic network made by two 1-dimensional connections and a 2-dimensional separatrix between two equilibria with different Morse indices. After changing the parameters, while keeping the 1-dimensional connections unaltered, we concentrate our study in the case where the 2-dimensional invariant manifolds of the equilibria do not intersect. We derive the first return map near the ghost of the attractor and we reduce the analysis of the system to a 2-dimensional map on the cylinder. Complex dynamical features arise from a discrete-time Bogdanov-Takens singularity, which may be seen as the organizing center by which one can obtain infinitely many attracting tori, strange attractors, infinitely many sinks and non-trivial contracting wandering domains. These dynamical phenomena occur within a structure that we call resonance wedge. As an application, we may see the "classical" Arnold tongue as a projection of a resonance wedge. The results are general, extend to other contexts and lead to a fine-tuning of the theory.