Phase breaks and chaos in a chain of diffusively coupled oscillators

The dynamics of phase disturbances in the 1D uniform medium described by FitzHugh-Nagumo equations was studied. It was found that the system synchronizes its oscillations if the initial disturbances are small. Large disturbances resulted in the appearance of phase breaks. Dependent on the system parameters, phase breaks were found to be either stable or unstable; stable breaks led to target pattern-like sources, unstable to extended chaos.