Abstract
We present a new method to detect phase as well as generalized synchronization in a wide class of complex systems. It is based on the recurrences of the system's trajectory to the neighborhood of a former state in phase space. We illustrate the applicability of the algorithm for the paradigmatic chaotic Rössler system in the funnel regime and for noisy data, where other methods to detect phase synchronization fail. Furthermore, we demonstrate for electrochemical experiments that the method can easily detect phase and generalized synchronization in non-phase-coherent and even non-stationary time series.