Nonlinear chemical dynamics: Oscillations, patterns, and chaos

Chemical reactions with nonlinear kinetic behavior can give rise to a remarkable set of spatiotemporal phenomena. These include periodic and chaotic changes in concentration, traveling waves of chemical reactivity, and stationary spatial (Turing) patterns. Although chemists were initially skeptical of the existence and the relevance of these phenomena, much progress has been made in the past two decades in characterizing, designing, modeling, and understanding them. Several nonlinear dynamical phenomena in chemical systems provide simpler analogues of behaviors found in biological systems.