The emergence of a coherent structure for coherent structures: localized states in nonlinear systems

Coherent structures emerge from the dynamics of many kinds of dissipative, externally driven, nonlinear systems, and continue to provoke new questions that challenge our physical and mathematical understanding. In one specific subclass of such problems, in which a pattern-forming, or 'Turing', instability occurs, rapid progress has been made recently in our understanding of the formation of localized states: patches of regular pattern surrounded by the unpatterned homogeneous background state. This short review article surveys the progress that has been made for localized states and proposes three areas of application for these ideas that would take the theory in new directions and ultimately be of substantial benefit to areas of applied science. Finally, I offer speculations for future work, based on localized states, that may help researchers to understand coherent structures more generally.