Oscillatory media and beyond

All the complex behavior described so far in this Chapter arises from the diffusive coupling of the local dynamics which in the homogeneous case have simple fixed points as asymptotic states. If the local dynamics becomes more complex, the range of possible dynamic behavior in the presence of diffusion becomes practically unlimited. It is clear that coupling chaotic subsystems could produce an extremely rich dynamics. But even the case of periodic local dynamics does so. Diffusively coupled chemical or biological oscillators may become synchronized (Pikovsky et ah, 2003), or rather additional instabilities may arise from the spatial coupling. This may produce target waves, spiral patterns, front instabilities and several different types of spatiotemporal chaos or phase turbulence (Kuramoto, 1984). 

Whereas it is impossible to properly summarize all these complex dynamic behavior, there is a situation in which it becomes 

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