Abstract
This paper presents an analysis of the invariant manifolds for a general family of locally coupled map lattices. These manifolds define the different types of full, partial, and anti-phase chaotic synchronization that can arise in discrete dynamical systems. Existence of various invariant manifolds, self-similarity as well as orderings and embeddings of the manifolds of a coupled map array are established. A general variational equation for the stability analysis of invariant manifolds is derived, and stability conditions for full and partial chaotic synchronization of concrete coupled maps are obtained. The general results are illustrated through examples of three coupled two-dimensional standard maps with damping.