Extreme events in two-dimensional disordered nonlinear lattices

Abstract

Spatiotemporal complexity is induced in a two dimensional nonlinear disordered lattice through the modulational instability of an initially weakly perturbed excitation. In the course of evolution we observe the formation of transient as well as persistent localized structures, some of which have extreme magnitude. We analyze the statistics of occurrence of these extreme collective events and find that the appearance of transient extreme events is more likely in the weakly nonlinear regime. We observe a transition in the extreme events recurrence time probability from exponential, in the nonlinearity dominated regime, to power law for the disordered one. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.