Hyper chaos: Laboratory experiment and numerical confirmation

Hyperchaos has been observed, for the first time, from a real physical system: a very simple fourth-order electrical circuit. It is autonomous and reciprocal and has only one nonlinear element, a three-segment piecewise-linear resistor. Because of the circuit's simplicity, the laboratory measurements have been confirmed by digital computer simulations. The hyperchaotic nature is confirmed by the two positive Lyapunov exponents associated with the attractor, which is a fractal with a Lyapunov dimension between 3 and 4.