The effect of external noise on the transition to chaos for maps of the interval which exhibit period-doubling bifurcations are considered. It is shown that the Liapunov characteristic exponent satisfies scaling in the vicinity of the transition. The critical exponent for noise is calculated with the use of Feigenbaum's renormalization group approach, and the scaling function for the Liapunov characteristic exponent is obtained numerically by iterating a map with additive noise.

• Received 8 December 1980

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.46.933