Predicting chaos through an harmonic balance technique: an application to the time-delayed Chua's circuit

The time-delayed Chua's circuit (TDCC) can be considered as a paradigm for studying chaos in circuits described by difference-differential equations. The dynamics of such circuits cannot be investigated by means of the standard time-domain techniques developed for finite dimensional systems. We show that through a spectral approach the occurrence of periodic limit cycles and of chaotic attractors can be easily predicted, without performing any simulations.