International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, Vol. 10, No. 3 (2000) 509
© World Scientific Publishing Company
 
 

 
Over the last two decades, chaos in engineering systems has gradually moved from being simply a curious phenomenon to one with real, practical significance and utility. Engineers, physicists, scientists and mathematicians have likewise advanced from the passive role of analyzing chaos to their present, active role of controlling and synchronizing chaos. This control is directed not only at suppression but also at exploiting its enormous potential. We now stand at the threshold of major advances in the control and synchronization of chaos - for new applications across the range of many disciplines.

This theme issue on the Control and Synchronization of Chaos provides a state-of-the-art presentation on the subject. It contains some readable surveys and tutorials, as well as many valuable technical contributions. The overviews and technical reports provide the latest advances in the theories, methodologies and applications of chaos and bifurcation control, chaos anti-control, and chaos synchronization. They detail various new ideas and novel approaches, and show how scientists may use chaos to create a wider variety of properties and greater flexibility in physical systems and information processing.

Chaos and bifurcation control promise to have a major impact on innovative time- and energy-critical engineering applications. Within this theme issue, readers will learn about the recent progress and challenging technical problems in this promising area of research - regarding both the fundamental theories and potential applications of chaos control and synchronization.

Chaos synchronization, which may also be viewed as a particular problem of chaos control, has grown over the recent years into an independent research subject with emerging applications in telecommunication. In this theme issue, the readers will find the latest overview articles as well as technical papers describing cutting edge advances in this fast evolving direction.

We hope that these well-written articles will bring the readers up-to-date on recent developments of the field and help spark the fuse toward new advances.

We would like to thank all the authors for their valuable contributions to this timely theme issue and thank all the reviewers for their serious referee work, which together have contributed to the completion of our editorial duties in due time.