Self-Organized Short-Term Memories

We investigate a short-term memory formation mechanism in a nonlinear dynamical system with many degrees of freedom. The duration of these memories increases as the number of degrees of freedom in the system is increased, and some properties of the memory evolution display scaling behavior. Previously observed self-organization in the long time behavior of this model is shown to be a remnant of this transient process. We present experiments on charge-density waves which we interpret in terms of this transient selforganization mechanism. Department of Physics, UCLA, 405 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547 The James Franck Institute, The University of Chicago, 5640 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, IL 60637 Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29694-1911