pynamicalsys: A Python toolkit for the analysis of dynamical systems

Abstract

Since Lorenz's seminal work on a simplified weather model, the numerical analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems has become one of the main subjects of research in physics. Despite of that, there remains a need for accessible, efficient, and easy-to-use computational tools to study such systems. In this paper, we introduce pynamicalsys, a simple yet powerful open-source Python module for the analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems. In particular, pynamicalsys implements tools for trajectory simulation, bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponents and several others chaotic indicators, period orbit detection and their manifolds, as well as escape and basins analysis. It also includes many built-in models and the use of custom models is straighforward. We demonstrate the capabilities of pynamicalsys through a series of examples that reproduces well-known results in the literature while developing the mathematical analysis at the same time. We also provide the Jupyter notebook containing all the code used in this paper, including performance benchmarks. pynamicalsys is freely available via the Python Package Index (PyPI) and is indented to support both research and teaching in nonlinear dynamics.