Phase synchronization in unidirectionally coupled Ikeda time-delay systems

Phase synchronization in unidirectionally coupled Ikeda time-delay systems exhibiting non-phase-coherent hyperchaotic attractors of complex topology with highly interwoven trajectories is studied. It is shown that in this set of coupled systems phase synchronization (PS) does exist in a range of the coupling strength which is preceded by a transition regime (approximate PS) and a nonsynchronous regime. However, exact generalized synchronization does not seem to occur in the coupled Ikeda systems (for the range of parameters we have studied) even for large coupling strength, in contrast to our earlier studies in coupled piecewise- linear and Mackey-Glass systems [27,28]. The above transitions are characterized in terms of recurrence based indices, namely generalized auto-correlation function P(t), correlation of probability of recurrence (CPR), joint probability of recurrence (JPR) and similarity of probability of recurrence (SPR). The existence of phase synchronization is also further confirmed by typical transitions in the Lyapunov exponents of the coupled Ikeda time-delay systems and also using the concept of localized sets.