About the Journal

Focus and Coverage

Chaos is a quarterly journal published by the American Institute of Physics and devoted to increasing the understanding of nonlinear phenomena and describing the manifestations in a manner comprehensible to researchers from a broad spectrum of disciplines.

 2010 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2011)*:
Chaos sees 16% increase in Impact Factor (Thomson Reuters, 2011)

* Data from the 2010 Journal Citation Reports^® Science Edition (Thomson Reuters, 2011).

2009 Journal Metrics from Elsevier Scopus®**:

**Data retrieved from www.journalmetrics.com. Copyright 2010 Elsevier B.V.

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Motivation and Description

Historical Background

In the past two decades the "new science," known popularly as "chaos," has given us deep insights into previously intractable, inherently nonlinear, natural phenomena. Building on important but isolated historical precedents (such as the work of Poincaré), "chaos" has in some cases caused a fundamental reassessment of the way in which we view the physical world. For instance, certain seemingly simple natural nonlinear processes, for which the laws of motion are known and completely deterministic, can exhibit enormously complex behavior, often appearing as if they were evolving under random forces rather than deterministic laws. One consequence is the remarkable result that these processes, although completely deterministic, are essentially unpredictable for long times. But practitioners of "nonlinear science," as "chaos" has become known among experts, recognize that nonlinear phenomena can also exhibit equally surprising orderliness. For example, certain seemingly complex nonlinear systems, involving many interacting components, can exhibit great regularity in their motion, and "coherent structures" – such as the Red Spot of Jupiter – can emerge from a highly disordered background.

Paradigms of Nonlinear Science

Researchers in this new nonlinear science have learned to recognize the seemingly contradictory manifestations of chaos and order as two fundamental features of inherently nonlinear phenomena. Indeed, "deterministic chaos" and "coherent structures" are often referred to as two "paradigms" of nonlinear science, in the sense that they represent archetypical aspects of nonlinear phenomena, independent of the conventional discipline in which they are observed. Two other "paradigms" that have emerged from recent studies of nonlinear phenomena can be termed "pattern formation, competition, and selection" and "adaptation, evolution, and learning."

It is perhaps most convincing to clarify the impact of these paradigms by presenting examples of their interdisciplinary relevance. The same type of "deterministic chaos" can be observed, for example, in electrical activity from biological systems, in the transition of a fluid to turbulent motion, and in the motion of the moons of the giant planets. "Coherent structures" arise in the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter, in giant earth ocean waves ("tsunamis"), in the spatial spread of certain epidemics, and, on a microscopic scale, in the behavior of certain unusual solid state materials. "Pattern formation, competition, and selection" occur in very similar ways in such seemingly disparate phenomena as instabilities in secondary oil recovery techniques and laser–plasma interactions in advanced technologies designed to control fusion energy. Recent attempts to isolate the conceptual, as opposed to the biological, essence of life have identified and clarified the paradigm of "adaptation, evolution, and learning" and have led to extensive studies of mathematical models of "neural networks" and to the creation of the field of "artificial life."

Interdisciplinary Nature and Methodology of Nonlinear Science

As these examples suggest, nonlinear science is inherently interdisciplinary, impacting upon traditional subjects ranging through all the physical and biological sciences, mathematics, engineering, and many of the social sciences, notably economics and demographics. Any attempt to circumscribe artificially the scope of nonlinear science inevitably limits the insights it can provide.

Significantly, the successful pursuit of nonlinear science requires the blending of three distinct methodological approaches:

• "experimental mathematics," which involves the use of cleverly conceived computer-based numerical simulations to give qualitative insights into problems that are at present analytically intractable;

• novel and powerful analytical mathematical methods to treat functional recursion relations, to solve certain nonlinear partial differential equations, or to describe complex geometrical structures arising in chaotic systems; and

• high precision experimental observations of similar nonlinear phenomena in many different natural and man-made systems arising in a variety of conventional disciplines.

An important illustration of both this tripartite approach and the interdisciplinary applicability of the paradigms of nonlinear science is the discovery of the metric universality in unimodular one-dimensional maps. Many physicists considered Feigenbaum's results for the universal dynamics of these maps to be a mere mathematical curiosity of no clear physical significance until Libchaber and others observed exactly the same period doubling dynamics in laboratory experiments on fluids and electric circuits. The ensuing efforts to prove various aspects of the theory rigorously have greatly stimulated large segments of the pure mathematics community. Of course, the interaction can also go in other ways; laboratory observations of new nonlinear phenomena have also stimulated and guided the development of theory and mathematical modeling. This close interaction among experimenters, theorists, and pure mathematicians is rare and refreshing in the recent age of increasingly specialized science.

Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

The now celebrated example of period doubling illustrates the crucial importance of transferring the developments in our understanding of nonlinear phenomena, wherever these developments occur, to other disciplines. The excitement and challenge of the journal, Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science, lie in its interdisciplinary character and its firm committment to communicating the most recent developments in nonlinear science to the research community at large. We welcome contributions from physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, engineering, economics, and social sciences, as well as other disciplines in which inherently nonlinear phenomena are of interest and importance. Further, we always seek a balance among the methods of computation, theory, and experiment, to reflect properly the tripartite methodology which has proved essential to the progress of nonlinear science. Finally, Chaos has grown to be truly international in character, again mirroring the field itself.

Uniqueness of Chaos

Chaos is a peer-reviewed research journal but with some unorthodox elements relative to typical journals. Besides front-line research papers, letters, and brief reports, Chaos includes solicited technical reviews and deliberately pedagogical articles of broad appeal. The Editors of Chaos take an active role in developing the content and, together with the AIP, seek to assure its comprehensibility, as well as relevance and quality. Importantly, approximately every other issue of Chaos is a special "Focus" issue. These issues are intended to provide a critical introduction and overview of a particular topic, suitable as an introduction to nonspecialists but also of value to experts in the area. To ensure timely publication of other articles, only about 60% of the articles in a "Focus" issue are devoted to the focal topic, with the remaining articles dealing with other areas of nonlinear science.

In addition, each article in Chaos is preceded by a "lead paragraph" targeted at the non-specialist reader. This paragraph provides a sense of the context of the work and conveys the primary results, but in language that is accessible to the journal's broad interdisciplinary audience.

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Editors

Editor-in-Chief

David K. Campbell (Boston University, Boston, MA, USA)
Solitons, coherent structures, Chaos in physical systems, intrinsic localized   modes, Nonlinear excitations and phenomena in novel electronic materials

Consulting Editors

Qi Ouyang (Peking University, Beijing, China)
Reaction-diffusion systems, wave propagation, pattern formation, spatiotemporal chaos, network topology and dynamics, biophysics

Sudeshna Sinha (The Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Taramani, Chennai, India)
Complex systems, coupled nonlinear systems, networks, control of chaotic systems, synchronization, pattern formation, applications of chaos to computations

Editors

F. Tito Arecchi (Istituto Nazionale di Ottica, Florence, Italy)
Nonlinear optics, optical pattern formation, control and synchronization of chaotic networks, temporal coding and neurodynamics

Stefano Boccaletti (CNR–Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, Florence, Italy)
Pattern formation in extended systems, control and synchronization of chaotic dynamics, structure and dynamics of complex networks

Elizabeth Bradley (University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA)
Control of chaotic systems, computer applications, chaos in engineered systems, time-series methods

Leonid Bunimovich (Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA)
Dynamical systems and statistical mechanics:Rigorous results, low dimensional chaos, billiards, Hamiltonian systems, coupled map lattices, deterministic walks in random environments, space-time chaos

William L. Ditto (University of Hawai'i at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, USA)
Biomedical engineering, neuroengineering, cardiac dynamics, neurodynamics, control of chaotic systems, chaotic computing

Robert E. Ecke (Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, USA)
Experimental nonlinear dynamics, pattern formation and turbulence, fluids

Irving R. Epstein (Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, USA)
Chemistry, Reaction-diffusion systems, pattern formation

Mitchell J. Feigenbaum (Rockefeller University, New York, NY, USA)
Theoretical physics, chaos, nonlinear phenomena in far equilibrium systems, fluids and statistical mechanics

Leon Glass (McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada)
Physiological dynamics, genetic networks, dynamics of periodically forced systems, neural networks, dynamics of cardiac arrhythmias

John L. Hudson (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA)
Chemical engineering, complex chemical systems, coupled chemical and biological oscillators, synchronization, feedback and forcing

Jürgen Kurths (University of Potsdam, Potsdam, Germany)
Synchronization, complex networks, recurrence, noise, applications

Adilson E. Motter (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA)
Network structure and dynamics; network cascades, synchronization, and control; biophysical networks; chaotic advection; chaos in relativistic systems

Anatoly I. Neishtadt (Space Research Institute, Moscow, Russia and Loughborough University, UK)
Mathematics, classical mechanics, perturbation theory, bifurcation theory

Yasumasa Nishiura (Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan)
Mathematics, Reaction-diffusion systems, wave propagation, bifurcation theory

Lev A. Ostrovsky (Zel Technologies, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA, and Institute of Applied Physics, RAS, Nizhny Novgorod, Russia)
Nonlinear waves, solitons, theoretical fluid dynamics, water waves, nonlinear acoustics, perturbation methods

Louis M. Pecora (Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA)
Applications of chaos, chaotic control, controlling chaos, synchronization, networks, synchronization in networks, attractor reconstruction, time series analysis

Kenneth C. Showalter (West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA)
Chemistry, reaction-diffusion systems, wave propagation, pattern formation, feedback and control

Charles P. Tresser (on disability leave from IBM)
Mathematics and applications of low dimensional dynamical systems, rigidity and universality, engineering and commercial applications of chaos, foundations of quantum mechanics

Lai-Sang Young (New York University, New York, NY, USA)
Geometric theory of low dimensional dynamical systems, statistical theories of chaos, random dynamical systems, connections to probability and nonequilibrium statistical mechanics, coupled networks

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Advisory Board

Term ending 31 December 2012

Valentin Afraimovich (San Luis Potosi State University, San Luis Potosi, Mexico)

Michelle Girvan (University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA)

Roger Grimshaw (Loughborough University, Loughborough, United Kingdom)

Anette E. Hosoi (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA)

Yuri Kivshar (The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia)

Vito Latora (Università di Catania, Catania, Italy)

Michael C. Mackey (McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada)

Anita Mehta (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Cambridge, MA, USA)

Yury A. Stepanyants (University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, Australia)

Z. Jane Wang (Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA)

Amie M. Wilkinson (University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA)

Term ending 31 December 2013

Réka Albert (Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, USA)

Javier M. Buldú (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain)

James Crutchfield (University of California, Davis, CA, USA)

Nir Davidson (Weizmann Institute, Rehovot, Israel)

Ulrike Feudel (Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Germany)

Raymond E. Goldstein (University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom)

Peter Grassberger (University of Wuppertal, Wuppertal, Germany)

Jeff Hasty (University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA)

Tasso J. Kaper (Boston University, Boston, MA, USA)

Daniel P. Lathrop (University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA)

Herbert Levine (University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA)

Alexander S. Mikhailov (Fritz-Haber-Institut der MPG, Berlin, Germany)

Philip J. Morrison (University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA)

Hinke Osinga (University of Bristol, Bristol, UK)

Hava T. Siegelmann (University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA)

Tamas Tel (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary)

Term ending 31 December 2014

Lora Billings (Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA)

Thomas L. Carroll (U. S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA)

Anne De Wit (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium)

Theo Geisel (Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany)

Peter Jung (Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA)

Raymond E. Kapral (University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada)

Fabio Marchesoni (Università di Camerino, Camerino, Italy)

John Milton (The Claremont Colleges, Claremont, CA, USA)

Erik Mosekilde (Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark)

Arkadi Pikovski (Postdam University, Potsdam, Germany)

Antonello Provenzale (Istituto di Cosmogeofisica del CNR, Turin, Italy)

Vered Rom-Kedar (The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel)

Leah B. Shaw (The College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA, USA)

Mary C. Silber (Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA)

Dmitry Treschev (Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia)

Ichiro Tsuda (Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan)

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Editorial Office

Contact the Chaos Editorial Office at:

Chaos Editorial Office

American Institute of Physics

Suite 1NO1

2 Huntington Quadrangle

Melville, NY 11747-4502, USA

Telephone: +1 516-576-2616

Fax: +1 516-576-2223

E-mail: chaos@aip.org

Editorial Staff: Linda Boniello, Benita Hammer, Christine Urso

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AIP Production Office

Authors of accepted manuscripts may contact the AIP Production Office at:

Editorial Supervisor

Chaos

American Institute of Physics

Suite 1NO1

2 Huntington Quadrangle

Melville, NY 11747-4502, USA

Telephone: +1 516-576-2382

Fax: +1 631-396-0060

E-mail: cha@aip.org

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ISSN and CODEN

Print: ISSN 1054-1500
Online: ISSN 1089-7682
 

CODEN: CHAOEH

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