Zugl.: Hamburg, Techn. Univ., Diss., 2008

Stuttgart, Univ., Diss., 2004.

Techn. University, Diss., 2002--Berlin.

Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2003--Darmstadt.

Techn. University, Diss., 2003--Darmstadt.

Techn. University, Diss., 2003--Berlin.

Die vorliegende Arbeit kombiniert Aspekte der nichtlinearen Dynamik mit denen der Unordnungsphysik. Die bekannte Standardabbildung wird mit einem räumlich ungeordneten aber periodischen Potential modifiziert. Transportexponenten sowohl für den Impuls als auch die kanonisch konjugierte Koordinate für das Standard- und das Zufallsmodell werden gegenübergestellt. Für das Zufallspotential ergibt sich verstärkter Transport. Gemittelte Transportexponenten des Zufallspotentials werden präsentiert und für verschiedene Systemausdehnungen verglichen. / The thesis at hand combines aspects of nonlinear dynamics with the physics of disorder. The standard map potential is replaced by a spatially quenched random periodic potential. Transport exponents for the standard and the random model are determined for the momentum as well as the canonically conjugate coordinate. Transport for the disordered potential is increased in comparison to the standard map. For the random case, quenched average transport exponents are presented. Finite-size effects are examined.

Ausgedehnte dissipative Systeme können fernab vom thermodynamischen Gleichgewicht instabil gegenüber Oszillationen bzw. Wellen oder raumzeitlichem Chaos werden. Die komplexe Ginzburg-Landau Gleichung (CGLE) stellt ein universelles Modell zur Beschreibung dieser raumzeitlichen Strukturen dar. Diese Arbeit ist der theoretischen Analyse komplexer Muster gewidmet. Mittels numerischer Bifurkations- und Stabilitätsanalyse werden Instabilitäten einfacher Muster identifiziert und neuartige Lösungen der CGLE bestimmt. Modulierte Amplitudenwellen (MAW) und Super-Spiralwellen sind Beispiele solcher komplexer Muster. MAWs können in hydrodynamischen Experimenten und Super-Spiralwellen in der Belousov-Zhabotinsky-Reaktion beobachtet werden. Der Grenzübergang von Phasen- zu Defektchaos wird durch den Existenzbereich der MAWs erklärt. Mittels der selben numerischen Methoden wird Bursting vom Fold-Hopf-Typ in einem Modell der Kalziumsignalübertragung in Zellen identifiziert.

In this thesis we investigate the formation of patterns in a simple activator-inhibitor model supplemented with an inhibitory nonlocal coupling term. This model exhibits a wave instability for slow inhibitor diffusion, while, for fast inhibitor diffusion, a Turing instability is found. For moderate values of the inhibitor diffusion these two instabilities occur simultaneously at a codimension-2 wave-Turing instability. We perform a weakly nonlinear analysis of the model in the neighbourhood of this codimension-2 instability. The resulting amplitude equations consist in a set of coupled Ginzburg-Landau equations. These equations predict that the model exhibits bistability between travelling waves and Turing patterns. We present a study of interfaces separating wave and Turing patterns arising from the codimension-2 instability. We study theoretically and numerically the dynamics of such interfaces in the framework of the amplitude equations and compare these results with numerical simulations of the model near and far away from the codimension-2 instability. Near the instability, the dynamics of interfaces separating small amplitude Turing patterns and travelling waves is well described by the amplitude equations, while, far from the codimension-2 instability, we observe a locking of the interface velocities. This locking mechanism is imposed by the absence of defects near the interfaces and is responsible for the formation of drifting pattern domains, i.e. moving localised patches of travelling waves embedded in a Turing pattern background and vice versa.

In large and complex systems, failures can have dramatic consequences, such as black-outs, pandemics or the loss of entire classes of an ecosystem. Nevertheless, it is a centuries-old intuition that by using networks to capture the core of the complexity of such systems, one might understand in which part of a system a phenomenon originates. I investigate this intuition using spectral methods to decouple the dynamics of complex systems near stationary states into independent dynamical modes. In this description, phenomena are tied to a specific part of a system through localized eigenvectors which have large amplitudes only on a few nodes of the system's network. Studying the occurrence of localized eigenvectors, I find that such localization occurs exactly for a few small network structures, and approximately for the dynamical modes associated with the most prominent failures in complex systems. My findings confirm that understanding the functioning of complex systems generally requires to treat them as complex entities, rather than collections of interwoven small parts. Exceptions to this are only few structures carrying exact localization, whose functioning is tied to the meso-scale, between the size of individual elements and the size of the global network. However, while understanding the functioning of a complex system is hampered by the necessary global analysis, the prominent failures, due to their localization, allow an understanding on a manageable local scale. Intriguingly, food webs might exploit this localization of failures to stabilize by causing the break-off of small problematic parts, whereas typical attempts to optimize technological systems for stability lead to delocalization and large-scale failures. Thus, this thesis provides insights into the interplay of complexity and localization, which is paramount to ascertain the functioning of the ever-growing networks on which we humans depend.