Hidden Attractors and Dynamical Behaviors in an Extended Rikitake System

In this paper, an extended Rikitake system is studied. Several issues, such as Hopf bifurcation, coexistence of stable equilibria and hidden attractor, and dynamics analysis at infinity are investigated either analytically or numerically. Especially, by a simple linear transformation, the wide range of hidden attractors is noticed, and the Lyapunov exponents diagram is given. The obtained results show that the unstable periodic solution generated by Hopf bifurcation leads to the hidden attractor. The existence of hidden attractors that may render the system's behavior unpredictable not only depends on the value of system parameters but also on the value of initial conditions. The phenomena are important and potentially problematic in engineering applications.