Scaling behaviour of non-hyperbolic coupled map lattices

Abstract

Coupled map lattices of non-hyperbolic local maps arise naturally in many physical situations described by discretised reaction diffusion equations or discretised scalar field theories. As a prototype for these types of lattice dynamical systems we study diffusively coupled Tchebyscheff maps of N-th order which exhibit strongest possible chaotic behaviour for small coupling constants a. We prove that the expectations of arbitrary observables scale with \sqrt{a} in the low-coupling limit, contrasting the hyperbolic case which is known to scale with a. Moreover we prove that there are log-periodic oscillations of period \log N^2 modulating the \sqrt{a}-dependence of a given expectation value. We develop a general 1st order perturbation theory to analytically calculate the invariant 1-point density, show that the density exhibits log-periodic oscillations in phase space, and obtain excellent agreement with numerical results.