Direct observation of a precursor in a complex system.

A precursor is a kind of instability in a nonequilibrium system observed prior to a bifurcation. It has been observed in important natural phenomena such as earthquakes and epileptic seizures. In most cases just qualitative results were reported, with the exception of some quantitative observations of noisy precursors. We report the observation of precursors excited by a deterministic perturbation. Quantitative characterization of this type of precursor is important in predicting a bifurcation in advance. This predicting ability comes from a dynamical structure present on the perturbed system.