J. C. Sprott, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Abstract: The Lorenz attractor was once thought to be the mathematically simplest autonomous dissipative chaotic flow, but it is now known that it is only one member of a very large family of such systems, many of which are even simpler. Even the system originally proposed by Lorenz is not in its simplest possible form. This paper will describe a number of simplifications that can be made to the Lorenz system that preserve its dynamics as well as a number of chaotic systems that are much simpler and hence can serve as alternate models of chaos.

Keywords: Lorenz, chaos, attractor, Lyapunov exponent