Understanding the spontaneous formation and dynamics of spatiotemporal patterns in dissipative nonequilibrium systems is one of the major challenges in nonlinear science. This collection of expository papers and advanced research articles, written by leading experts, provides an overview of the state of the art. The topics include new approaches to the mathematical characterization of spatiotemporal complexity, with special emphasis on the role of symmetry, as well as analysis and experiments of patterns in a remarkable variety of applied fields such as magnetoconvection, liquid crystals, granular media, Faraday waves, multiscale biological patterns, visual hallucinations, and biological pacemakers. The unitary presentations, guiding the reader from basic fundamental concepts to the most recent research results on each of the themes, make the book suitable for a wide audience.

This IMA Volume in Mathematics and its Applications PATTERN FORMATION IN CONTINUOUS AND COUPLED SYSTEMS is based on the proceedings of a workshop with the same title, but goes be yond the proceedings by presenting a series of mini-review articles that sur vey, and provide an introduction to, interesting problems in the field. The workshop was an integral part of the 1997-98 IMA program on "EMERG ING APPLICATIONS OF DYNAMICAL SYSTEMS." I would like to thank Martin Golubitsky, University of Houston (Math ematics) Dan Luss, University of Houston (Chemical Engineering), and Steven H. Strogatz, Cornell University (Theoretical and Applied Mechan ics) for their excellent work as organizers of the meeting and for editing the proceedings. I also take this opportunity to thank the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Army Research Office (ARO), whose financial support made the workshop possible. Willard Miller, Jr., Professor and Director v PREFACE Pattern formation has been studied intensively for most of this cen tury by both experimentalists and theoreticians, and there have been many workshops and conferences devoted to the subject. In the IMA workshop on Pattern Formation in Continuous and Coupled Systems held May 11-15, 1998 we attempted to focus on new directions in the patterns literature.

The framework of ‘symmetry’ provides an important route between the abstract theory and experimental observations. The book applies symmetry methods to dynamical systems, focusing on bifurcation and chaos theory. Its exposition is organized around a wide variety of relevant applications. From the reviews: "[The] rich collection of examples makes the book...extremely useful for motivation and for spreading the ideas to a large Community."--MATHEMATICAL REVIEWS

In this volume, the problems of pattern formation in physics, chemistry and other related fields in complex and nonlinear dissipative systems are studied. Main subjects discussed are formation mechanisms, properties, statistics, characterization and dynamics of periodic and nonperiodic patterns in the electrohydrodynamics in liquid crystals, Rayleigh-Benard convection, crystallization, viscous fingering and Belouzov-Zhabotinsky chemical reaction. Recent developments in topological and defect-mediated chaos, chaos in systems with large degrees of freedom and turbulence-turbulence transitions are also discussed.

This volume contains the proceedings of two related workshops held at The Fields Institute in February and March 1993. The workshops were an integral part of the thematic year in Dynamical Systems and Bifurcation Theory held during the 1992-1993 academic year. This volume covers the full spectrum of research involved in combining symmetry methods with dynamical systems and bifurcation theory, from the development of the mathematical theory in order to understand the underlying mechanisms to the application of this new mathematical theory, to partial differential equation models of realistic ph.