Spatiotemporal organization of coupled nonlinear pendula through impurities

We study the effect of impurities introduced into a lattice and their ability to control the dynamical behavior of arrays of coupled nonlinear chaotic oscillators. In particular we show that under certain conditions a single impurity can produce simple spatiotemporal patterns in place of complex chaotic behavior for very long chains of oscillators. Under the same conditions we also examine the effect of disorder in the lengths of the pendula and explain the observed patterns and periodic behavior to be the result of inadvertent impurities.