Nonchaotic Transition from Quasiperiodicity to Complete Phase Locking

Abstract
We show the existence of a generic integrate-and-fire phenomenon which separates the transition to complete phase locking from the transition to chaos. We argue that our picture provides a natural explanation of "missing" hysteretic bands in the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction. In addition, we explain the origin of experimentally observed "deviations from universality" and bumps in the Arnold tongues in driven relaxation oscillators.