Chaotic dynamics of a dynamical system is not necessarily persistent. If there is (without any active intervention from outside) a transition towards a (possibly nonchaotic) attractor, this phenomenon is called transient chaos, which can be observed in a variety of systems, e.g., in chemical reactions, population dynamics, neuronal activity, or cardiac dynamics. Also, chimera states, which show coherent and incoherent dynamics in spatially distinct regions of the system, are often chaotic transients. In many practical cases, the control of the chaotic dynamics (either the termination or the preservation of the chaotic dynamics) is desired. Although the self-termination typically occurs quite abruptly and can so far in general not be properly predicted, previous studies showed that in many systems a ‘terminal transient phase” (TTP) prior to the self-termination existed, where the system was less susceptible against small but finite perturbations in different directions in state space. In this study, we show that, in the specific case of chimera states, these susceptible directions can be related to the structure of the chimera, which we divide into the coherent part, the incoherent part and the boundary in between. That means, in practice, if self-termination is close we can identify the direction of perturbation which is likely to maintain the chaotic dynamics (the chimera state). This finding improves the general understanding of the state space structure during the TTP, and could contribute also to practical applications like future control strategies of epileptic seizures which have been recently related to the collapse of chimera states.

中文翻译：

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短暂嵌合状态的敏感性

动力学系统的混沌动力学不一定是持久的。如果存在（没有外界的任何积极干预）向（可能是非混沌的）吸引子的过渡，则这种现象称为瞬时混乱，可以在各种系统中观察到，例如化学反应，种群动态，神经元活动，或心脏动力。同样，在系统的空间上不同的区域中显示相干和不相干动态的嵌合体状态通常是混沌瞬态。在许多实际情况下，需要控制混沌动力学（混沌动力学的终止或保持）。尽管自我终止通常会非常突然地发生，并且到目前为止到目前为止通常无法正确预测，先前的研究表明，在许多系统中，存在自终止之前的“终端瞬态阶段”（TTP），该系统不太容易受到状态空间中不同方向的微小但有限的扰动的影响。在这项研究中，我们表明，在嵌合体状态的特定情况下，这些敏感方向可能与嵌合体的结构有关，我们将其分为相干部分，不相干部分以及它们之间的边界。这意味着，在实践中，如果自我终止是接近的，我们可以识别出可能维持混沌动力学（嵌合状态）的扰动方向。这一发现提高了对TTP期间状态空间结构的一般理解，