Influence of cumulative damage on synchronization of Kuramoto oscillators on networks

In this paper, we study the synchronization of identical Kuramoto phase oscillators under cumulative stochastic damage to the edges of networks. We analyze the capacity of coupled oscillators to reach a coherent state from initial random phases. The process of synchronization is a global function performed by a system that gradually changes when the damage weakens individual connections of the network. We explore diverse structures characterized by different topologies. Among these are deterministic networks as a wheel or the lattice formed by the movements of the knight on a chess board, and random networks generated with the Erd\H{o}s-R\'enyi and Barab\'asi-Albert algorithms. In addition, we study the synchronization times of 109 non-isomorphic graphs with six nodes. The synchronization times and other introduced quantities are sensitive to the impact of damage, allowing us to measure the reduction of the capacity of synchronization and classify the effect of damage in the systems under study. This approach is general and paves the way for the exploration of the effect of damage accumulation in diverse dynamical processes in complex systems.Comment: 27 pages, 9 figure

Synchronization in complex networks

Synchronization processes in populations of locally interacting elements are in the focus of intense research in physical, biological, chemical, technological and social systems. The many efforts devoted to understand synchronization phenomena in natural systems take now advantage of the recent theory of complex networks. In this review, we report the advances in the comprehension of synchronization phenomena when oscillating elements are constrained to interact in a complex network topology. We also overview the new emergent features coming out from the interplay between the structure and the function of the underlying pattern of connections. Extensive numerical work as well as analytical approaches to the problem are presented. Finally, we review several applications of synchronization in complex networks to different disciplines: biological systems and neuroscience, engineering and computer science, and economy and social sciences.Comment: Final version published in Physics Reports. More information available at http://synchronets.googlepages.com

Dynamical and spectral properties of complex networks

Dynamical properties of complex networks are related to the spectral properties of the Laplacian matrix that describes the pattern of connectivity of the network. In particular we compute the synchronization time for different types of networks and different dynamics. We show that the main dependence of the synchronization time is on the smallest nonzero eigenvalue of the Laplacian matrix, in contrast to other proposals in terms of the spectrum of the adjacency matrix. Then, this topological property becomes the most relevant for the dynamics.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, to be published in New Journal of Physic

Symbolic Synchronization and the Detection of Global Properties of Coupled Dynamics from Local Information

We study coupled dynamics on networks using symbolic dynamics. The symbolic dynamics is defined by dividing the state space into a small number of regions (typically 2), and considering the relative frequencies of the transitions between those regions. It turns out that the global qualitative properties of the coupled dynamics can be classified into three different phases based on the synchronization of the variables and the homogeneity of the symbolic dynamics. Of particular interest is the {\it homogeneous unsynchronized phase} where the coupled dynamics is in a chaotic unsynchronized state, but exhibits (almost) identical symbolic dynamics at all the nodes in the network. We refer to this dynamical behaviour as {\it symbolic synchronization}. In this phase, the local symbolic dynamics of any arbitrarily selected node reflects global properties of the coupled dynamics, such as qualitative behaviour of the largest Lyapunov exponent and phase synchronization. This phase depends mainly on the network architecture, and only to a smaller extent on the local chaotic dynamical function. We present results for two model dynamics, iterations of the one-dimensional logistic map and the two-dimensional H\'enon map, as local dynamical function.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figure