General properties of propagation in chaotic systems

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We conjecture that in one-dimensional spatially extended systems the propagation velocity of correlations coincides with a zero of the convective Lyapunov spectrum. This conjecture is successfully tested in three different contexts: (i) a Hamiltonian system (a Fermi-Pasta-Ulam chain of oscillators); (ii) a general model for spatio-temporal chaos (the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation); (iii) experimental data taken from a CO₂ laser with delayed feedback. In the last case, the convective Lyapunov exponent is determined directly from the experimental data.