Complex dynamics in circuits with memristors

Innovative memristor-centered strategies to sense, store, and process information may be tested inexpensively and reliably exploiting the nonlinear dynamics of simple emulators based upon standard two-terminal devices from electrical circuit theory. Should a promising outcome emerge from the emulatorbased tests, the novel strategies would be later implemented with memristor nanodevices. A wide variety of dynamic phenomena may emerge in oscillators employing these kinds of emulator. Here we first design a fourth-order memristor chaotic oscillator, and then simplify it to obtain a simpler third-order circuit with complex dynamics. The application of techniques from the theory of nonlinear dynamics to the mathematical description of the oscillators allows to gain a deeper insight into their rich dynamic behaviour, revealing the potential of arrays of circuits of this kind to support the appearance of a wide set of spatio-temporal patterns enabling the implementation of novel computing paradigms.