On the generality of the unfolded Chua's circuit

In this paper, we study the generality of Chua's oscillator by deriving a class of vector fields that Chua's oscillator is equivalent to. For the class of vector fields with a scalar nonlinearity, we prove that under certain conditions, two such vector fields are topologically conjugate if the Jacobian matrices at each point have the same eigenvalues and the equilibrium points are matched up. We show how these conditions are related to the complete state observability of a corresponding linear system. These results are used to show that the n-dimensional Chua's oscillator is topologically conjugate to almost every vector field in this class. We comment on the special case when the vector field is piecewise-linear and in particular when the vector field is 2-segment piecewise-linear, These results are illustrated by transforming several systems studied in the literature into equivalent Chua's oscillators. We also extend some of these results to the case of several scalar nonlinearities. As a corollary we prove that almost all piecewise-linear vector fields with parallel boundary planes are topologically conjugate if the boundary planes and equilibrium points are the same and the eigenvalues in corresponding regions are the same. We also give a dual result of topological conjugacy.