PERIODIC, QUASI-PERIODIC, AND CHAOTIC POTENTIALS GENERATED BY ELECTROCHEMICAL CONCENTRATION CELLS - LOCAL AND GLOBAL DYNAMICS

We extend previous work describing the passive electrical coupling of two periodic chemical states to include quasiperiodic and chaotic stat es. Our setup resembles an electrochemical concentration cell (a batte ry) whose half cells [continuous-flow stirred tank reactors (CSTRs)] e ach contain the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. For a closed elect rical circuit the two half cells are weakly coupled by an external var iable resistance and by a constant low mass flow. This battery may pro duce either periodic, quasiperiodic, or chaotic alternating current de pending on the dynamic BZ states chosen in the half cells. A lower fra ctal dimensionality is calculated from the electrical potential of a s ingle chaotic CSTR than from the difference potential (relative potent ial) of the two chaotic half cell potentials. A similar situation is o bserved in model calculations of a chaotic spatiotemporal system (the driven Brusselator in one space dimension) where the dimensionality de rived from a local time series is lower than the dimensionality of the global trajectory calculated from the Karhunen-Loeve coefficients.