Spatiotemporal Chaos in Distributed Systems:Theory and Practice

摘要

This paper presents theoretical and experimental results concerning the hypothesis of spatiotemporal chaos in distributed physical systems far from equilibrium. Modern tools of nonlinear time series analysis, such as the correlation dimension and the maximum Lyapunov exponent, were applied to various time series, corresponding to different physical systems such as space plasmas (solar flares, magnetic-electric field components) lithosphere-faults system (earthquakes) brain and cardiac dynamics during or without epileptic episodes. Futhermore, the method of surrogate data was used for the exclusion of 'pseudo chaos' caused by the nonlinear distortion of a purely stochastic process. The results of the nonlinear analysis presented in this study constitute experimental evidence for significant phenomena indicated by the theory of nonequilibrium dynamics such as nonequilibrium phase transition, chaotic synchronization, chaotic intermittency, directed percolation, defect turbulence, spinodal nucleation and clustering.