Global dynamics of oscillator populations under common noise

Common noise acting on a population of identical oscillators can synchronize them. We develop a description of this process which is not limited to the states close to synchrony, but provides a global picture of the evolution of the ensembles. The theory is based on the Watanabe-Strogatz transformation, allowing us to obtain closed stochastic equations for the global variables. We show that on the initial stage, the order parameter grows linearly in time, while on the late stages the convergence to synchrony is exponentially fast. Furthermore, we extend the theory to nonidentical ensembles with the Lorentzian distribution of natural frequencies and determine the stationary values of the order parameter in dependence on driving noise and mismatch.A.P. thanks IFISC for hospitality. We are very thankful to M. Rosenblum for helpful discussions. Financial support from the Spanish MINECO and FEDER under grants FISICOS (FIS2007-60327) and DeCoDicA (TEC2009-14101) is acknowledged.Peer reviewe