Multiscale dynamics in communities of phase oscillators

Abstract

We investigate the dynamics of systems of many coupled phase oscillators with heterogeneous frequencies. We suppose that the oscillators occur in M groups. Each oscillator is connected to other oscillators in its group with “attractive” coupling, such that the coupling promotes synchronization within the group. The coupling between oscillators in different groups is “repulsive,” i.e., their oscillation phases repel. To address this problem, we reduce the governing equations to a lower-dimensional form via the ansatz of Ott and Antonsen, Chaos 18, 037113 (2008). We first consider the symmetric case where all group parameters are the same, and the attractive and repulsive coupling are also the same for each of the M groups. We find a manifold L of neutrally stable equilibria, and we show that all other equilibria are unstable. For M ≥ 3, L has dimension M − 2, and for M = 2, it has dimension 1. To address the general asymmetric case, we then introduce small deviations from symmetry in the group and coupling parameters. Doing a slow/fast timescale analysis, we obtain slow time evolution equations for the motion of the M groups on the manifold L. We use these equations to study the dynamics of the groups and compare the results with numerical simulations.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Jan 03, 2012
Source ID
10.1063/1.3672513

Entities

People

  • Ari Tenzer
  • Dustin Anderson
  • Edward Ott
  • Gilad Barlev
  • Michelle Girvan
  • Thomas M. Antonsen Jr.

Organizations

  • Carleton College
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of Maryland
  • Washington University in St. Louis

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics

Readers

  • Atmospheric Science / Meteorology, specifically Wind Wave Turbulence.
  • Graph Algorithms and Convex Optimization.
  • Wave Propagation and Nonlinear Chaotic Dynamics.