Laser Chimeras as a paradigm for multi-stable patterns in complex systems

Chimera is a rich and fascinating class of self-organized solutions developed in high dimensional networks having non-local and symmetry breaking coupling features. Its accurate understanding is expected to bring important insight in many phenomena observed in complex spatio-temporal dynamics, from living systems, brain operation principles, and even turbulence in hydrodynamics. In this article we report on a powerful and highly controllable experiment based on optoelectronic delayed feedback applied to a wavelength tunable semiconductor laser, with which a wide variety of Chimera patterns can be accurately investigated and interpreted. We uncover a cascade of higher order Chimeras as a pattern transition from N to N - 1 clusters of chaoticity. Finally, we follow visually, as the gain increases, how Chimera is gradually destroyed on the way to apparent turbulence-like system behaviour.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Spiral wave chimeras for coupled oscillators with inertia

We report the appearance and the metamorphoses of spiral wave chimera states in coupled phase oscillators with inertia. First, when the coupling strength is small enough, the system behavior resembles classical two-dimensional (2D) Kuramoto-Shima spiral chimeras with bell-shape frequency characteristic of the incoherent cores. As the coupling increases, the cores acquire concentric regions of constant time-averaged frequencies, the chimera becomes quasiperiodic. Eventually, with a subsequent increase in the coupling strength, only one such region is left, i.e., the whole core becomes frequency-coherent. An essential modification of the system behavior occurs, when the parameter point enters the so-called solitary} region. Then, isolated oscillators are normally present on the spiral core background of the chimera states. These solitary oscillators do not participate in the common spiraling around the cores; instead, they start to oscillate with different time-averaged frequencies (Poincar\'e winding numbers). The number and the disposition of solitary oscillators can be any, given by the initial conditions. At a further increase in the coupling, the spiraling disappears, and the system behavior passes to a sort of spatiotemporal chaos.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

Delayed-feedback chimera states: Forced multiclusters and stochastic resonance

A nonlinear oscillator model with negative time-delayed feedback is studied numeri- cally under external deterministic and stochastic forcing. It is found that in the unforced system complex partial synchronization patterns like chimera states as well as salt-and-pepper like soli- tary states arise on the route from regular dynamics to spatio-temporal chaos. The control of the dynamics by external periodic forcing is demonstrated by numerical simulations. It is shown that one-cluster and multi-cluster chimeras can be achieved by adjusting the external forcing frequency to appropriate resonance conditions. If a stochastic component is superimposed to the determin- istic external forcing, chimera states can be induced in a way similar to stochastic resonance, they appear, therefore, in regimes where they do not exist without noise.Comment: 6 pages of paper with references + tex style file + 5 figure

Two-dimensional spatiotemporal complexity in dual-delayed nonlinear feedback systems: Chimeras and dissipative solitons

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Chaos 28, 103106 (2018) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5043391.We demonstrate for a photonic nonlinear system that two highly asymmetric feedback delays can induce a variety of emergent patterns which are highly robust during the system’s global evolution. Explicitly, two-dimensional chimeras and dissipative solitons become visible upon a space-time transformation. Switching between chimeras and dissipative solitons requires only adjusting two system parameters, demonstrating self-organization exclusively based on the system’s dynamical properties. Experiments were performed using a tunable semiconductor laser’s transmission through a Fabry-Pérot resonator resulting in an Airy function as nonlinearity. Resulting dynamics were bandpass filtered and propagated along two feedback paths whose time delays differ by two orders of magnitude. An excellent agreement between experimental results and the theoretical model given by modified Ikeda equations was achieved. Photonic delay systems are of astonishing diversity and have created a rich field of fundamental research and a wide range of applications. Under a transformation from time into pseudo-scape, their basic architecture makes them equivalent to ring networks with perfectly-symmetric coupling. For the first time we extend this spatiotemporal analogy in experiments by adding a second delay, 100 times the length of the first delay line. Nonlinearity is provided by a tunable semiconductor laser traversing a Fabry-Pérot resonator. Visualized in 2D-space, we show the temporal evolution of different chimeras and dissipative solitons. Experimental results excellently agree with numerical simulations of the double-delay bandpass Ikeda equation. Based on the attractors of multiple fixed-point solutions, we provide insight into the mechanism structuring the system’s dynamics.DFG, 163436311, SFB 910: Kontrolle selbstorganisierender nichtlinearer Systeme: Theoretische Methoden und Anwendungskonzept

Cascades of Multi-headed Chimera States for Coupled Phase Oscillators

Chimera state is a recently discovered dynamical phenomenon in arrays of nonlocally coupled oscillators, that displays a self-organized spatial pattern of co-existing coherence and incoherence. We discuss the appearance of the chimera states in networks of phase oscillators with attractive and with repulsive interactions, i.e. when the coupling respectively favors synchronization or works against it. By systematically analyzing the dependence of the spatiotemporal dynamics on the level of coupling attractivity/repulsivity and the range of coupling, we uncover that different types of chimera states exist in wide domains of the parameter space as cascades of the states with increasing number of intervals of irregularity, so-called chimera's heads. We report three scenarios for the chimera birth: 1) via saddle-node bifurcation on a resonant invariant circle, also known as SNIC or SNIPER, 2) via blue-sky catastrophe, when two periodic orbits, stable and saddle, approach each other creating a saddle-node periodic orbit, and 3) via homoclinic transition with complex multistable dynamics including an "eight-like" limit cycle resulting eventually in a chimera state.Comment: 13 pages, 14 figure

Stability of an [N/2]-dimensional invariant torus in the Kuramoto model at small coupling

When the natural frequencies are allocated symmetrically in the Kuramoto model there exists an invariant torus of dimension [N/2]+1 (N is the population size). A global phase shift invariance allows to reduce the model to $N-1$ dimensions using the phase differences, and doing so the invariant torus becomes [N/2]-dimensional. By means of perturbative calculations based on the renormalization group technique, we show that this torus is asymptotically stable at small coupling if N is odd. If N is even the torus can be stable or unstable depending on the natural frequencies, and both possibilities persist in the small coupling limit.Comment: to appear in Physica