# COTN: A Chaotic Oscillatory Transformer Network for Complex Volatile Systems under Extreme Conditions

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.06273 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2511.06273/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 31 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 9 Nov 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Informer: Beyond Efficient Transformer for Long Sequence Time-Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2012.07436/) (2020)
- [Autoformer: Decomposition Transformers with Auto-Correlation for Long-Term Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13008/) (2021)
- [FEDformer: Frequency Enhanced Decomposed Transformer for Long-term Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.12740/) (2022)
- [Transformers versus LSTMs for electronic trading](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.11400/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [QFCQT: A Chaotically Gated Quantformer Framework for Volatile Time-Series Forecasting](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.07363/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Accurate prediction of financial and electricity markets, especially under extreme conditions, remains a significant challenge due to their intrinsic nonlinearity, rapid fluctuations, and chaotic patterns. To address these limitations, we propose the Chaotic Oscillatory Transformer Network (COTN). COTN innovatively combines a Transformer architecture with a novel Lee Oscillator activation function, processed through Max-over-Time pooling and a lambda-gating mechanism. This design is specifically tailored to effectively capture chaotic dynamics and improve responsiveness during periods of heightened volatility, where conventional activation functions (e.g., ReLU, GELU) tend to saturate. Furthermore, COTN incorporates an Autoencoder Self-Regressive (ASR) module to detect and isolate abnormal market patterns, such as sudden price spikes or crashes, thereby preventing corruption of the core prediction process and enhancing robustness. Extensive experiments across electricity spot markets and financial markets demonstrate the practical applicability and resilience of COTN. Our approach outperforms state-of-the-art deep learning models like Informer by up to 17% and traditional statistical methods like GARCH by as much as 40%. These results underscore COTN's effectiveness in navigating real-world market uncertainty and complexity, offering a powerful tool for forecasting highly volatile systems under duress.