Stable oscillations and Devil's staircase in the Van der Pol oscillator

A forced van der pol relaxation oscillator is studied experimentally in the regime of stable oscillations. The variable parameter is chosen to be the driving frequency. For a range of parameter values, we show that the rotation number varies continuously from 0 to 1. This work provides experimental evidence that period-adding bifurcations to chaos previously reported by Kennedy and Chua are intimately connected to the existence of a regime of stable oscillations where the rotation number shows a Devil's-staircase structure.