  Recurrence in the phase space of complex systems is a well-studied
phenomenon, which has provided deep insights into the nonlinear dynamics of
such systems. For dissipative systems, characteristics based on recurrence
plots have recently attracted much interest for discriminating qualitatively
different types of dynamics in terms of measures of complexity, dynamical
invariants, or even structural characteristics of the underlying attractor's
geometry in phase space. Here, we demonstrate that the latter approach also
provides a corresponding distinction between different co-existing dynamical
regimes of the standard map, a paradigmatic example of a low-dimensional
conservative system. Specifically, we show that the recently developed approach
of recurrence network analysis provides potentially useful geometric
characteristics distinguishing between regular and chaotic orbits. We find that
chaotic orbits in an intermittent laminar phase (commonly referred to as sticky
orbits) have a distinct geometric structure possibly differing in a subtle way
from those of regular orbits, which is highlighted by different recurrence
network properties obtained from relatively short time series. Thus, this
approach can help discriminating regular orbits from laminar phases of chaotic
ones, which presents a persistent challenge to many existing chaos detection
techniques.
