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2D Rössler Attractor — x-y Projection & Poincaré Section

A 2D companion to the 3D Rössler attractor: real RK4 integration of the actual Rössler equations projected onto the x-y plane, with adjustable a/b/c parameters that drive a genuine period-doubling route to chaos, and a live Poincaré section built from real plane crossings.

Chaos & Dynamics2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted⇄ 3D version
2d-rossler ↗ Open standalone

This is a 2D companion to the site's 3D Rössler attractor. Instead of a rotatable 3D scene, it integrates the exact same three differential equations — dx/dt = −y − z, dy/dt = x + ay, dz/dt = b + z(x − c) — with real 4th-order Runge–Kutta stepping and draws two flat, information-dense views: the x–y projection of the trajectory, which shows the Rössler system's characteristic single spiral that occasionally kicks up in z and jumps back inward, and a genuine Poincaré section — the actual set of points where the numerically integrated trajectory crosses the plane y = 0 (found by interpolating the real crossing between two RK4 steps, not synthesized). Sliding c from about 2.5 up through 3.5, 4.2 and 5.7 walks the system through a real period-doubling cascade into chaos, visible directly as the Poincaré section grows from one point, to two, to four, to a dense chaotic scatter. A second trajectory started just 0.00001 away in x runs alongside the first so the exponential divergence that gives chaos theory its name can be read as a number, not just seen as a visual fan-out.

⚙ Under the hood

A 2D companion to the 3D Rössler attractor: real RK4 integration of the exact Rössler equations projected onto the x-y plane, with adjustable a/b/c parameters that drive a genuine period-doubling route to chaos, a second trajectory started 0.00001 away to measure divergence directly, and a live Poincaré section built from real interpolated crossings of the y=0 plane.

chaosrosslerstrange-attractorperiod-doublingoderunge-kuttapoincare-sectiondeterministic-chaos2d

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install

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