SPATIOTEMPORAL CHAOS AND INTERMITTENCY IN A 1-DIMENSIONAL ENERGY-CONSERVING COUPLED MAP LATTICE

The Klein-Gordon equation with cubic nonlinearity (the phi(4) equation ) is considered and an energy-conserving difference scheme is proposed for its solution. The scheme, extended to finite time increments and spacing, is then used to define a coupled map lattice For which an ene rgy-like functional is conserved. The case of linear instability of th e vacuum state is considered when this energy is not positive definite and found to lead, under certain additional conditions, to spatio-tem poral chaos. The statistical properties of this type of solution such as probability densities and correlation functions are calculated. Str ong intermittency, whereby the process wanders between two sub-manifol ds, is found and studied in detail.