A recent publication based on the work done by ICTS post-doctoral fellow Dr. Amit Kumar Chatterjee and faculty members Dr. Anupam Kundu and Dr. Manas Kulkarni, titled ‘Spatiotemporal spread of perturbations in a driven dissipative Duffing chain: An out-of-time-ordered correlator approach’, in the journal Physical Review E, has been selected by the Editors as the ‘Editors’ Suggestion’.
Study of chaotic phenomena has always been a subject of interest in the context of dynamical systems, due to its wide applications in diverse fields, starting from atmospheric sciences to technological electro-mechanical devices. However, search for proper tools, for systematic study of chaos in spatially extended classical and quantum systems, are still in progress. In this regard, to probe open (no energy conservation) classical many-body systems, the authors in this study have implemented a recently proposed classical analogue of quantum out-of-time-ordered commutators that have been extensively used to study quantum chaos. In this classical analogue, the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) has been successfully incorporated by the authors to diagnose different dynamical regimes of a chain of coupled Duffing oscillators in presence of external drive and dissipation. The OTOC provides a clear demarcation of three distinct dynamical regimes where chaos is sustained, transient, and absent. The work exhibits the significance and prospect of OTOC as a remarkable diagnostic of spatio-temporal chaos in generic classical many-body systems in presence of dissipation and drive. The present work consisting of extensive information about the degree of chaos can be of potential use in areas like encryption devices, secure communications, and signal detection to name a few.
The study marks a significant step forward in the area of driven-dissipative systems and was selected by the editors due to its particular interest, importance and clarity.