{
  "handle": "Attractor",
  "mechanism": "A region of a dynamical system's state space that trajectories converge toward from a surrounding basin of initial conditions. Once a trajectory enters the basin of attraction, the system's dynamics pull it toward the attractor and confine it thereafter (absent external perturbation). Attractors may be point-like (fixed points — a stable {{equilibrium}}), periodic (limit cycles), or strange (chaotic — bounded but non-repeating). Substrate property: every dissipative dynamical system has attractors; the structure of attractors and their basins is what the system's dynamics is. Downstream patterns use attractor-and-basin reasoning to predict where coordination processes will settle and which initial conditions route to which outcome.",
  "gloss": "A state-space region dynamics pull toward — fixed points, limit cycles, or chaotic attractors",
  "invariants": [
    "Convergence: trajectories starting in the basin of attraction approach the attractor in the limit.",
    "Confinement: trajectories that enter the attractor remain within it absent external perturbation.",
    "Basin: each attractor has an associated basin of attraction; disjoint attractors partition the set of initial conditions whose trajectories converge."
  ],
  "_meta": {
    "tier": 1,
    "ring": 0,
    "path": [
      "Physics",
      "Primitives"
    ],
    "supersedes": [
      "sema:Attractor#mh:SHA-256:8c2d9daace2e9ba3e4b061e43c7ac213c185639763e7b36d53bfca4cdc97a0ea"
    ]
  },
  "sema_id": "sema:Attractor#mh:SHA-256:0036dca019fa8b7f87cc5982f7ad0267561a99daf3f1c489963c27854f1475a6",
  "sema_ref": "Attractor#0036",
  "sema_stub": "0036",
  "dependencies": {
    "references": {
      "equilibrium": "sema:Equilibrium#mh:SHA-256:4f036318bc81500ad159994d9ab7efbec87883eccecb18e64ede15cde3e099d2"
    }
  },
  "sema_layer": "Physics",
  "sema_category": "Primitives",
  "used_by": {}
}