Chaotic Traveling Waves in a Coupled Map Lattice

Traveling waves triggered by a phase slip in coupled map lattices are studied. A local phase slip affects globally the system, which is in strong contrast with kink propagation. Attractors with different velocities coexist, and form quantized bands determined by the number of phase slips. The mechanism and statistical and dynamical characters are studied with the use of spatial asymmetry, basin volume ratio, Lyapunov spectra, and mutual information. If the system size is not far from an integer multiple of the selected wavelength, attractors are tori, while weak chaos remains otherwise, which induces chaotic modulation of waves or a chaotic itinerancy of traveling states. In the itinerancy, the residence time distribution obeys the power law distribution, implying the existence of a long-ranged correlation. Supertransients before the formation of traveling waves are noted in the high nonlinearity regime. In the weaker nonlinearity regime corresponding to the frozen random pattern, we have found fluctuation of domain sizes and Brownian-like motion of domains. Propagation of chaotic domains by phase slips is also found. Relevance of our discoveries to Bénard convection experiments and possible applications to information processing are briefly discussed.