Periodic perturbation of chemical oscillators: entrainment and induced synchronization.

It is well known that a large number of catalyst-carrying beads immersed in an oscillatory chemical medium (Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction) display collective oscillatory behavior. Using a light sensitive version of BZ, we show that this collective behavior can be entrained to an external light source with an oscillatory intensity. Thus, the emerging collective behavior can be controlled by an external perturbation.