  We show how solitary states in a system of globally coupled FitzHugh-Nagumo
oscillators can lead to the emergence of chimera states. By a numerical
bifurcation analysis of a suitable reduced system in the thermodynamic limit we
demonstrate how solitary states, after emerging from the synchronous state,
become chaotic in a period-doubling cascade. Subsequently, states with a single
chaotic oscillator give rise to states with an increasing number of incoherent
chaotic oscillators. In large systems, these chimera states show extensive
chaos. We demonstrate the coexistence of many of such chaotic attractors with
different Lyapunov dimensions, due to different numbers of incoherent
oscillators.
