In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and many other scientists since most systems are inherently nonlinear in nature. Nonlinear dynamical systems, describing changes in variables over time, may appear chaotic, unpredictable, or counterintuitive, contrasting with much simpler linear systems.
vignette|Un graphique de l'attracteur étrange de Lorenz pour les valeurs ρ = 28, σ = 10, β = 8/3 « Effet papillon » est une expression qui résume une métaphore concernant le phénomène fondamental de sensibilité aux conditions initiales de la théorie du chaos. La formulation exacte qui en est à l'origine fut exprimée par Edward Lorenz lors d'une conférence scientifique en 1972, dont le titre était : vignette|Le battement d'ailes du papillon.
In multivariable calculus, an initial value problem (IVP) is an ordinary differential equation together with an initial condition which specifies the value of the unknown function at a given point in the domain. Modeling a system in physics or other sciences frequently amounts to solving an initial value problem. In that context, the differential initial value is an equation which specifies how the system evolves with time given the initial conditions of the problem.
Une équation différentielle linéaire est un cas particulier d'équation différentielle pour lequel on peut appliquer des procédés de superposition de solutions, et exploiter des résultats d'algèbre linéaire. De nombreuses équations différentielles de la physique vérifient la propriété de linéarité. De plus, les équations différentielles linéaires apparaissent naturellement en perturbant une équation différentielle (non linéaire) autour d'une de ses solutions.
In descriptive statistics and chaos theory, a recurrence plot (RP) is a plot showing, for each moment in time, the times at which the state of a dynamical system returns to the previous state at , i.e., when the phase space trajectory visits roughly the same area in the phase space as at time . In other words, it is a plot of showing on a horizontal axis and on a vertical axis, where is the state of the system (or its phase space trajectory). Natural processes can have a distinct recurrent behaviour, e.g.
Recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) is a method of nonlinear data analysis (cf. chaos theory) for the investigation of dynamical systems. It quantifies the number and duration of recurrences of a dynamical system presented by its phase space trajectory. The recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) was developed in order to quantify differently appearing recurrence plots (RPs), based on the small-scale structures therein.