Chaos and Spatiotemporal Chaos in Convective Systems

Abstract

Much of early research on chaos from the viewpoint of physics was performed using spatially confined convective systems. In spatially extended convective systems, on the other hand, spatiotemporal chaos occurs. However, there is no unified definition for the term spatiotemporal chaos as for chaos. To unify definition, a property common to the three kinds of spatiotemporal chaos observed in electroconvection of nematic liquid crystals is presented.