Spatiotemporal order, disorder, and propagating defects in homogeneous system of relaxation oscillators.

A variety of complex spatial patterns relevant to chemical and biological systems can be generated through reaction-diffusion mechanisms. In this paper, we show that diffusive coupling through the inactivating component in a system of relaxation oscillators extends such complexity to the temporal domain, generating remarkable spatiotemporal phenomena. We provide analytic explanations of the antiphase synchronization and spatially patterned oscillatory death regimes. We report a chimera state where patches with distinct dynamics coexist and also observe propagating phase defects resembling persistent structures in cellular automata that may be used for computation.