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Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 174103 (2003) [4 pages]

Collapse of Spatiotemporal Chaos

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Renate Wackerbauer1 and Kenneth Showalter2
1Department of Physics, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska 99775-5920, USA
2Department of Chemistry, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506-6045, USA

Received 2 June 2003; published 22 October 2003

The transient nature of spatiotemporal chaos is examined in reaction-diffusion systems with coexisting stable states. We find the apparent asymptotic spatiotemporal chaos of the Gray-Scott system to be transient, with the average transient lifetime increasing exponentially with medium size. The collapse of spatiotemporal chaos arises when statistical spatial correlations produce a quasihomogeneous medium, and the system obeys its zero-dimensional dynamics to relax to its stable asymptotic state.


©2003 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.174103
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.174103
PACS: 05.45.Jn, 05.45.Pq, 82.40.Bj, 89.75.Fb

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