At the very origin of chaos in three-dimensional dynamical systems

The mechanism responsible for the emergence of chaotic behavior has been identified analytically within a class of three-dimensional dynamical systems which generalize the well-known E.N. Lorenz 1963 system. The dynamics in the phase space has been reformulated in terms of a first-exit-time problem. Chaos emerges due to discontinuous solutions of a transcendental problem ruling the time for a particle to cross a potential wall. Numerical results point toward the genericity of the new found mechanism.