Nonintegrable dynamics of the triplet-triplet spatiotemporal interaction

In this paper we examine the coupling of two wave triplets sharing two common modes. The analysis is performed in the solitonic sector of the parameter space where uncoupled solutions departing from linearly unstable homogeneous initial conditions evolve into a collection of regularly interspersed, spatiotemporally localized spikes. The uncoupled system is integrable, but coupling destroys integrability. As coupling grows, energy transfer to smaller spatial scales does appear and becomes faster not only in linearly unstable, but also in linearly stable cases. Chaos in low-dimensional subsystems appears to be responsible for the transfer. We perform a series of numerical tests to verify this idea. [S1063-651X(99)08710-3].