Abstract
The simplest megastable chaotic system is built by employing a piecewise-linear damping function which is periodic over the spatial domain. The unforced oscillator generates an infinite number of nested limit cycles with constant distances whose strength of attraction decreases gradually as moving to outer ones. The attractors and the basins of attraction of the proposed system are almost compatible with those of the system with sinusoidal damping. However, the nonzero Lyapunov Exponent of the latter is consistently below that of the former. A comparative bifurcation analysis is carried out for periodically forced systems, showing the chaotic behavior of coexisting attractors in specific values of parameters. Changing the bifurcation parameter results in expansion, contraction, merging, and separation of the coexisting attractors, make it challenging to find the corresponding basins. Three symmetric pairs of attractors are observed; each one consists of two symmetric attractors (with respect to the origin) with almost the same values of the corresponding Lyapunov Exponent.