Phase Synchronization as a Mechanism of Controlling Spatiotemporal Chaos via External Periodic Signal

We find that phase synchronization (PS) is a mechanism in which the spatiotemporal chaos (STC) can be suppressed to a spatially regular (SR) state by applying an external periodic signal in a one-dimensional driven drift-wave system. In the driving wave coordinate, the nonlinear system can be transformed to a set of coupled oscillators moving in a periodic potential. In this multi-dimensional system, the internal modes are slaved one by one through PS by the control signal. Two types of responses of the internal modes to the external periodic signal are observed. For some modes, the stabilization is through frequency-locking; while for the other modes, a special kind of PS without frequency-locking, namely multi-looping PS, is developed.