CONTROLLING CHAOS IN THE BELOUSOV-ZHABOTINSKY REACTION

DETERMINISTIC chaos is characterized by long-term unpredictability arising from an extreme sensitivity to initial conditions. Such behaviour may be undesirable, particularly for processes dependent on temporal regulation. On the other hand, a chaotic system can be viewed as a virtually unlimited reservoir of periodic behaviour which may be accessed when appropriate feedback is applied to one of the system parameters1. Feedback algorithms have now been successfully applied to stabilize periodic oscillations in chaotic laser2, diode3, hydrodynamic4 and magnetoelastic5 systems, and more recently in myocardial tissue6. Here we apply a map-based, proportional-feedback algorithm7,8 to stabilize periodic behaviour in the chaotic regime of an oscillatory chemical system: the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction.