,
which can actually
help either as a complementary measure to Lyapunov Exponents, or
as an alternative parameter characterising chaos when Lyapunov
exponents are very difficult, or even impossible to work out. For
example, when dealing with nucleus-nucleus collision in nuclear
physics fields, only the final momentum distribution of almost all
particles can be recorded on field and there is no possibility of
recording the dynamic evolution of the phenomena, thus not
allowing to carry out the traditional procedures for the
calculation of Lyapunov Exponents. In this paper the analytical
relationships between the leading Lyapunov exponent and the values
of both for discrete maps and continuous systems are
reported, together with experimental comparisons drawn from the
simulation of Chua's circuit and Lorenz system in different
operational conditions. Moreover, a simple analog circuit is
presented to compute the asymptotic distance experimentally.
Key words: chaotic systems, chaos indicators, Lyapunov exponents, phase transitions, critical point phenomena, nonlinear dynamics
