Topological and metric analysis of heteroclinic crisis in laser chaos.

The power-law behavior of the average time between intermittent bursts in the NMR-laser dynamics near a heteroclinic tangency crisis is investignted. Using symbolic-dynamical techniques, new crisis-induced sequences are identified in the strange attractors reconstructed from both experimental and simulated data. Our approach provides n precise criterion for the onset of the attractor widening due to the collision of the stable and the unstable manifold belonging to different unstable periodic orbits