title: Critical properties of the synchronization transition in space-time chaos.
abstract: We study two coupled spatially extended dynamical systems which exhibit space-time chaos. The transition to the synchronized state is treated as a nonequilibrium phase transition, where the average synchronization error is the order parameter. The transition in one-dimensional systems is found to be generically in the universality class of the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equation with a growth-limiting term ("bounded KPZ"). For systems with very strong nonlinearities in the local dynamics, however, the transition is found to be in the universality class of directed percolation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Potsdam, Postfach 601553, D-14415 Potsdam, Germany.
authors.forename: Volker
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Ahlers
authors.forename: Arkady
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pikovsky