Spatial recurrence plots.

We propose an extension of the recurrence plot concept to perform quantitative analyzes of roughness and disorder of spatial patterns at a fixed time. We introduce spatial recurrence plots (SRPs) as a graphical representation of the pointwise correlation matrix, in terms of a two-dimensional spatial return plot. This technique is applied to the study of complex patterns generated by coupled map lattices, which are characterized by measures of complexity based on SRPs. We show that the complexity measures we propose for SRPs provide a systematic way of investigating the distribution of spatially coherent structures, such as synchronization domains, in lattice profiles. This approach has potential for many more applications, e.g., in surface roughness analyzes.