  Phase synchronization in unidirectionally coupled Ikeda time-delay systems
exhibiting non-phase-coherent hyperchaotic attractors of complex topology with
highly interwoven trajectories is studied. It is shown that in this set of
coupled systems phase synchronization (PS) does exist in a range of the
coupling strength which is preceded by a transition regime (approximate PS) and
a nonsynchronous regime. However, exact generalized synchronization does not
seem to occur in the coupled Ikeda systems (for the range of parameters we have
studied) even for large coupling strength, in contrast to our earlier studies
in coupled piecewise-linear and Mackey-Glass systems
\cite{dvskml2006,dvskml2008}. The above transitions are characterized in terms
of recurrence based indices, namely generalized autocorrelation function
$P(t)$, correlation of probability of recurrence (CPR), joint probability of
recurrence (JPR) and similarity of probability of recurrence (SPR). The
existence of phase synchronization is also further confirmed by typical
transitions in the Lyapunov exponents of the coupled Ikeda time-delay systems
and also using the concept of localized sets.
