Phase coherence in chaotic oscillatory media

Collective oscillations of lattices of locally coupled chaotic Rossler oscillators are studied with regard to the dynamical scaling of their phase interfaces. Using analogies with the complex Ginzburg-Landau and the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang equations, we argue that phase coherence should be lost in the infinite-size limit. Our numerical results, however, indicate possible discrepancies with a Langevin-like description using an effective white-noise term. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.