Abstract
Numerical simulations of the Lorenzian water wheel have been used to investigate the influence of stochastic noise on the lifetimes of chaotic transients. Whereas, in one region of parameter space no noise dependency could be detected, a shortening of the lifetimes of more than four decades was found in another region. This large effect was produced by a significant modification of the attraction basin of a quasistable stationary state rather than by affecting the chaotic orbits before the chaos-order transitions occurred. This novel phenomenon of noise-induced chaos-order transitions is not related to stochastic resonance or other noise-induced effects. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.55.2215 © 1997 The American Physical Society