It is shown how the existence of low-dimensional chaotic dynamical systems describing turbulent fluid flow might be determined experimentally. Techniques are outlined for reconstructing phase-space pictures from the observation of a single coordinate of any dissipative dynamical system, and for determining the dimensionality of the system's attractor. These techniques are applied to a well-known simple three-dimensional chaotic dynamical system.

• Received 13 November 1979

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.45.712