The collective dynamics in populations of magnetic spin torque oscillators
(STO) is an intensely studied topic in modern magnetism. Here, we show that
arrays of STO coupled via dipolar fields can be modeled using a variant of the
Kuramoto model, a well-known mathematical model in non-linear dynamics. By
investigating the collective dynamics in arrays of STO we find that the
synchronization in such systems is a finite size effect and show that the
critical coupling-for a complete synchronized state-scales with the number of
oscillators. Using realistic values of the dipolar coupling strength between
STO we show that this imposes an upper limit for the maximum number of
oscillators that can be synchronized. Further, we show that the lack of long
range order is associated with the formation of topological defects in the
phase field similar to the two-dimensional XY model of ferromagnetism. Our
results shed new light on the synchronization of STO, where controlling the
mutual synchronization of several oscillators is considered crucial for
applications.Comment: Accepted for publication in Scientific Reports. Corrected typo in
Eq.(9) from previous versio
