Satija and Ketoja discovered an interesting dynamical system in course of the study

of the Schrdinger equation for one electron in a two dimensional periodic lattice
on a uniform magnetic eld. While this equation and its variants have several uses
in physics, that is not our concern here. Rather, we shall purely focus on the
neglected mathematical aspects of the Satija-Ketoja system in a form completely
removed from its connections to quantum mechanics. To our knowledge, some of this
has never been explicitly discussed. The Satija-Ketoja map is two dimensional map
with a strikingly simple definition:

x_{n+1}=\dfrac{1}{x_n-E+2\sigma\cos(2\pi\theta_n)}

\theta_{n+1}=(\theta_n+\omega) \mod 1

Unless stated otherwise for all the experiments described here we recursively
perform the above mapping for 100,000 iterations. Here, the parameter E stems from
the eigenvalue of the underlying Schrdinger equation. It may be taken as 0 or for
the purposes of the experiments shown here as 0.1 it is not of much consequence
for our purpose. For the first experiment (Figure 1) we set the parameter \omega=e,
i.e. 2.718281828. \theta_n the angle variable of the map changes by increments of
size \omega. However, since we are taking modulo 1 of the value, our \theta_n axis
is bounded between 0 and 1 and effectively projects the map on the surface of a
cylinder of unit circumference. The parameter \sigma is then made to vary between .
1 to 2. We find that as \sigma changes the map generates an attractor, whose core
evolves from a simple closed curve (on the said cylinder; .1, .25); to a curve with
one break (.5), to one with break and a separate branch (.75), to a strange
attractor at \sigma=1. For \sigma>1 attractor becomes a many branched curve with
trails of points (1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2).

Satija_01Figure 1

In our next experiment (Figure 2) with the S-K system we keep \sigma=1 and set
\omega to the following values: \phi (Golden Ratio), \sqrt{2}, \sqrt{3}, \sqrt[3]
{2}, e, \pi, \sqrt{10}, \tfrac{22}{7}, \tfrac{355}{113}. The first 7 are irrational
while the last two are rational and the well-known 1st and 3rd convergents of the
continuous fraction expressions for \pi.

Satija_02Figure 2

Another way of visualizing this attractor is in a \theta_n-independent manner by

plotting x_n and x_{n+1} (Figure 3) for the same values of \sigma as above. This
reveals the strange attractor structure in a rectangular hyperbolic framework. This
latter framework comes from form of the definition of x_{n+1} which involves a
reciprocal relation with x_n