Retracting fronts induce spatiotemporal intermittency

The intermittent route to spatiotemporal complexity is analyzed in simple models which display a subcritical bifurcation without hysteresis. A new type of spatiotemporal complex behavior is found, induced by fronts which clean the perturbations around an unstable state. The mechanism which generates these retracting fronts through nonlinear dispersion is analyzed in the frame of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation. For sufficiently strong nonlinear dispersion the effects also occur for a supercritical bifurcation. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.