Collective behavior in coupled chaotic map lattices with random perturbations

Numerical simulations of coupled map lattices with non-local interactions (i.e., the coupling of a given map occurs with all lattice sites) often involve a large computer time if the lattice size is too large. In order to study dynamical effects which depend on the lattice size we considered the use of small truncated lattices with random inputs at their boundaries chosen from a uniform probability distribution. This emulates a “thermal bath”, where deterministic degrees of freedom exhibiting chaotic behavior are replaced by random perturbations of finite amplitude. We demonstrate the usefulness of this idea to investigate the occurrence of completely synchronized chaotic states as the coupling parameters are varied. We considered one-dimensional lattices of chaotic logistic maps at outer crisis x→4x(1−x).