Crisis induced intermittency in the electrical conductivity of TlInTe2

The electrical conductivity of the ternary semiconductor TlInTe2 exhibits irregular behaviour in a broad range of its S-shaped I–V characteristics. Just above the critical current value intermittent jumping between two or more levels of conductivity is observed. Statistical examinations of the jump heights and of the time intervals between jumps (the laminar lengths of the system) show power law distributions. Furthermore these laminar lengths also exhibit a power law dependence on I–Ic. These observations indicate that the system is governed by a form of crisis induced intermittency, which is caused by the merging of two or more attractors corresponding to different conductivity levels. The analysis of the dynamic behaviour using the Grassberger and Procaccia algorithm shows that these attractors are high dimensional.