Complete synchronization induced by disorder in coupled chaotic lattices

The effect of phase disorder in external forces introduced into two-dimensional lattices of coupled chaotic pendulums is investigated. As the increase of the disorder, we find complete synchronization between the pendulums in each chain and different periodic synchronized patterns, while the chain remains asynchronous if all driving forces have the same phase. Applying the master stability function method, an analytic solution is given to support the numerical results. All these findings may provide further insight into chaos control and synchronization in nonlinear systems. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.