Bistable Chimera Attractors on a Triangular Network of Oscillator Populations

We study a triangular network of three populations of coupled phase oscillators with identical frequencies. The populations interact nonlocally, in the sense that all oscillators are coupled to one another, but more weakly to those in neighboring populations than to those in their own population. This triangular network is the simplest discretization of a continuous ring of oscillators. Yet it displays an unexpectedly different behavior: in contrast to the lone stable chimera observed in continuous rings of oscillators, we find that this system exhibits \emph{two coexisting stable chimeras}. Both chimeras are, as usual, born through a saddle node bifurcation. As the coupling becomes increasingly local in nature they lose stability through a Hopf bifurcation, giving rise to breathing chimeras, which in turn get destroyed through a homoclinic bifurcation. Remarkably, one of the chimeras reemerges by a reversal of this scenario as we further increase the locality of the coupling, until it is annihilated through another saddle node bifurcation.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure

Chimera and globally clustered chimera: Impact of time delay

Following a short report of our preliminary results [Phys. Rev. E 79, 055203(R) (2009)], we present a more detailed study of the effects of coupling delay in diffusively coupled phase oscillator populations. We find that coupling delay induces chimera and globally clustered chimera (GCC) states in delay coupled populations. We show the existence of multi-clustered states that act as link between the chimera and the GCC states. A stable GCC state goes through a variety of GCC states, namely periodic, aperiodic, long-- and short--period breathers and becomes unstable GCC leading to global synchronization in the system, on increasing time delay. We provide numerical evidence and theoretical explanations for the above results and discuss possible applications of the observed phenomena.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Chimeras in networks of planar oscillators

Chimera states occur in networks of coupled oscillators, and are characterized by having some fraction of the oscillators perfectly synchronized, while the remainder are desynchronized. Most chimera states have been observed in networks of phase oscillators with coupling via a sinusoidal function of phase differences, and it is only for such networks that any analysis has been performed. Here we present the first analysis of chimera states in a network of planar oscillators, each of which is described by both an amplitude and a phase. We find that as the attractivity of the underlying periodic orbit is reduced chimeras are destroyed in saddle-node bifurcations, and supercritical Hopf and homoclinic bifurcations of chimeras also occur.Comment: To appear, Phys. Rev.

Chimera Ising Walls in Forced Nonlocally Coupled Oscillators

Nonlocally coupled oscillator systems can exhibit an exotic spatiotemporal structure called chimera, where the system splits into two groups of oscillators with sharp boundaries, one of which is phase-locked and the other is phase-randomized. Two examples of the chimera states are known: the first one appears in a ring of phase oscillators, and the second one is associated with the two-dimensional rotating spiral waves. In this article, we report yet another example of the chimera state that is associated with the so-called Ising walls in one-dimensional spatially extended systems, which is exhibited by a nonlocally coupled complex Ginzburg-Landau equation with external forcing.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Self-Emerging and Turbulent Chimeras in Oscillator Chains

We report on a self-emerging chimera state in a homogeneous chain of nonlocally and nonlinearly coupled oscillators. This chimera, i.e. a state with coexisting regions of complete and partial synchrony, emerges via a supercritical bifurcation from a homogeneous state and thus does not require preparation of special initial conditions. We develop a theory of chimera basing on the equations for the local complex order parameter in the Ott-Antonsen approximation. Applying a numerical linear stability analysis, we also describe the instability of the chimera and transition to a phase turbulence with persistent patches of synchrony

Hole Structures in Nonlocally Coupled Noisy Phase Oscillators

We demonstrate that a system of nonlocally coupled noisy phase oscillators can collectively exhibit a hole structure, which manifests itself in the spatial phase distribution of the oscillators. The phase model is described by a nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation, which can be reduced to the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation near the Hopf bifurcation point of the uniform solution. By numerical simulations, we show that the hole structure clearly appears in the space-dependent order parameter, which corresponds to the Nozaki-Bekki hole solution of the complex Ginzburg-Landau equation.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

An experimental route to spatiotemporal chaos in an extended 1D oscillators array

We report experimental evidence of the route to spatiotemporal chaos in a large 1D-array of hotspots in a thermoconvective system. Increasing the driving force, a stationary cellular pattern becomes unstable towards a mixed pattern of irregular clusters which consist of time-dependent localized patterns of variable spatiotemporal coherence. These irregular clusters coexist with the basic cellular pattern. The Fourier spectra corresponding to this synchronization transition reveals the weak coupling of a resonant triad. This pattern saturates with the formation of a unique domain of great spatiotemporal coherence. As we further increase the driving force, a supercritical bifurcation to a spatiotemporal beating regime takes place. The new pattern is characterized by the presence of two stationary clusters with a characteristic zig-zag geometry. The Fourier analysis reveals a stronger coupling and enables to find out that this beating phenomena is produced by the splitting of the fundamental spatiotemporal frequencies in a narrow band. Both secondary instabilities are phase-like synchronization transitions with global and absolute character. Far beyond this threshold, a new instability takes place when the system is not able to sustain the spatial frequency splitting, although the temporal beating remains inside these domains. These experimental results may support the understanding of other systems in nature undergoing similar clustering processes.Comment: 12 pages, 13 figure

Synchronization Transition in the Kuramoto Model with Colored Noise

We present a linear stability analysis of the incoherent state in a system of globally coupled, identical phase oscillators subject to colored noise. In that we succeed to bridge the extreme time scales between the formerly studied and analytically solvable cases of white noise and quenched random frequencies.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Chemical turbulence equivalent to Nikolavskii turbulence

We find evidence that a certain class of reaction-diffusion systems can exhibit chemical turbulence equivalent to Nikolaevskii turbulence. The distinctive characteristic of this type of turbulence is that it results from the interaction of weakly stable long-wavelength modes and unstable short-wavelength modes. We indirectly study this class of reaction-diffusion systems by considering an extended complex Ginzburg-Landau (CGL) equation that was previously derived from this class of reaction-diffusion systems. First, we show numerically that the power spectrum of this CGL equation in a particular regime is qualitatively quite similar to that of the Nikolaevskii equation. Then, we demonstrate that the Nikolaevskii equation can in fact be obtained from this CGL equation through a phase reduction procedure applied in the neighborhood of a codimension-two Turing--Benjamin-Feir point.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Non-universal results induced by diversity distribution in coupled excitable systems

We consider a system of globally coupled active rotators near the excitable regime. The system displays a transition to a state of collective firing induced by disorder. We show that this transition is found generically for any diversity distribution with well defined moments. Singularly, for the Lorentzian distribution (widely used in Kuramoto-like systems) the transition is not present. This warns about the use of Lorentzian distributions to understand the generic properties of coupled oscillators