title: Bursts in the chaotic trajectory lifetimes preceding controlled periodic motion
abstract: The average lifetime [tau(H)] it takes for a randomly started trajectory to land in a small region (H) on a chaotic attractor is studied. tau(H) is an important issue for controlling chaos. We point out that if the region H is visited by a short periodic orbit, the lifetime tau(H) strongly deviates from the inverse of the naturally invariant measure contained within that region [&mgr;(N)(H)(-1)]. We introduce the formula that relates tau(H)/&mgr;(N)(H)(-1) to the expanding eigenvalue of the short periodic orbit visiting H.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia.
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Paar
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Buljan