Markovian effects in the chaotic synchronization of two coupled one-dimensional lattices of phase oscillators

We study a model consisting of two identical unidirectionally coupled 1-D arrays of phase oscillators. The master array is in the spatio-temporal chaos regime and the coupling across the two arrays is not strong enough in order to reach complete synchronization. The time series of the distance between the arrays is the main object of our study. We can approximate the dynamics of the aforementioned time series with that of a first-order Markov process with two symbols. This model can be implemented in arrays of phase-locked loops (PPL). (C) 2001 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.