On-off intermittency: A mechanism for bursting

On-off intermittency is an aperiodic switching between static, or laminar, behavior and chaotic bursts of oscillation. It can be generated by systems having an unstable invariant (or quasi-invariant) manifold, within which is found a suitable attractor. We clarify the roles of such attractors in producing intermittency, provide examples, and relate them to previous work. © 1993 The American Physical Society.