Quantifying predictability and basin structure in infinite-dimensional delayed systems: a stochastic basin entropy approach

The Mackey-Glass system is a paradigmatic example of a delayed model whose dynamics is particularly complex due to, among other factors, its multistability involving the coexistence of many periodic and chaotic attractors. The prediction of the long-term dynamics is especially challenging in these systems, where the dimensionality is infinite and initial conditions must be specified as a function in a finite time interval. In this paper we extend the recently proposed basin entropy to randomly sample arbitrarily high-dimensional spaces. By complementing this stochastic approach with the basin fraction of the attractors in the initial conditions space we can understand the structure of the basins of attraction and how they are intermixed. The results reported here allow us to quantify the predictability and provide indicators of the presence of bifurcations. The tools employed can result very useful in the study of complex systems of infinite dimension.