Revealing the building blocks of spatiotemporal chaos: Deviations from extensivity

We have performed high-precision computational studies of the fractal dimension as a function of system length for spatiotemporal chaotic states of the one-dimensional complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. Our data show deviations from extensivity on a length scale consistent with the chaotic length scale, indicating that this spatiotemporal chaotic system is composed of weakly interacting building blocks, each containing about 2 degrees of freedom. Our results also suggest an explanation of some of the windows of periodicity found in spatiotemporal systems of moderate size.