Experiments on spatio-temporal chaos

Under non-equilibrium conditions, a spatially-extended system will often undergo a transition from a uniform state to a state with spatial variation (a “pattern”). Patterns are of interest because their formation is associated with non-linear effects which can lead to qualitatively new phenomena that do not occur in linear systems. Among the most fascinating of these phenomena is spatio-temporal chaos (STC). This paper briefly reviews some of the experimental observations of and measurements on STC.