Dynamical Aspects of Mean Field Plane Rotators and the Kuramoto Model

The Kuramoto model has been introduced in order to describe synchronization phenomena observed in groups of cells, individuals, circuits, etc. We look at the Kuramoto model with white noise forces: in mathematical terms it is a set of N oscillators, each driven by an independent Brownian motion with a constant drift, that is each oscillator has its own frequency, which, in general, changes from one oscillator to another (these frequencies are usually taken to be random and they may be viewed as a quenched disorder). The interactions between oscillators are of long range type (mean field). We review some results on the Kuramoto model from a statistical mechanics standpoint: we give in particular necessary and sufficient conditions for reversibility and we point out a formal analogy, in the N→∞ limit, with local mean field models with conservative dynamics (an analogy that is exploited to identify in particular a Lyapunov functional in the reversible set-up). We then focus on the reversible Kuramoto model with sinusoidal interactions in the N→∞ limit and analyze the stability of the non-trivial stationary profiles arising when the interaction parameter K is larger than its critical value K _c . We provide an analysis of the linear operator describing the time evolution in a neighborhood of the synchronized profile: we exhibit a Hilbert space in which this operator has a self-adjoint extension and we establish, as our main result, a spectral gap inequality for every K>K _c .     

Intrinsic fluctuations and a phase transition in a class of large populations of interacting oscillators

A theory of intrinsic fluctuations is developed of a phase ordering parameter for large populations of weakly and uniformly coupled limit-cycle oscillators with distributed native frequencies. In particular it is shown that the intensity as well as the correlation time of fluctuations exhibit power-law divergence at the onset of mutual entrainment with critical exponents which depend on whether the coupling strength approaches the threshold from below or above. This peculiar feature is demonstrated by numerical simulations mainly through finite-size scaling analyses. In the course of exploring its origin, we encounter a new concept termed a correlation frequency which provides a natural interpretation of the finite-size scaling laws. A comment is given on a recent theory by Kuramoto and Nishikawa to clarify why it contradicts our results.     

Emergent Dynamics of a Generalized Lohe Model on Some Class of Lie Groups

We introduce a Lohe group which is a new class of matrix Lie groups and present a continuous dynamical system for the synchronization of group elements in a Lohe group. The Lohe group includes classical Lie groups such as the orthogonal, unitary, and symplectic groups, and since Lohe groups need not be compact, global existence of ODEs may fail. The proposed dynamical system generalizes the Lohe model (Lohe in J Phys A 43:465301, 2010; Lohe in J Phys A 42:395101–395126, 2009) itself a nonabelian generalization of the Kuramoto model, and alongside we also generalize the analytical framework (Ha and Ryoo in J Stat Phys 163:411–439, 2016) of emergent and unique phase-locked states. For the construction of the phase-locked states, we introduce Lyapunov functions measuring the ensemble diameter and the dissimilarity between two Lohe flows, and derive Gronwall-type differential inequalities for them. The global existence of solutions then become a consequence of the boundedness of these Lyapunov functions. Our sufficient framework for the emergent dynamics is formulated in terms of coupling strength and initial states, and it leads to the global existence of solutions and the formation and uniqueness of a phase-locked asymptotic state. As a concrete example, we demonstrate how our theory can show emergent phenomenon on the Heisenberg group, where all initial configurations tend to a unique phase-locked state exponentially fast.     

Synchronization of Phase Oscillators in Networks with Certain Frequency Sequence

Synchronization of Kuramoto phase oscillators arranged in real complex neural networks is investigated. It is shown that the synchronization greatly depends on the sets of natural frequencies of the involved oscillators. The influence of network connectivity heterogeneity on synchronization depends particularly on the correlation between natural frequencies and node degrees. This finding implies a potential application that inhibiting the effects caused by the changes of network structure can be bManced out nicely by choosing the correlation parameter appropriately.     

Conformists and Contrarians in a Kuramoto Model with Uniformly Distributed Natural Frequencies

A generalization of the Kuramoto model in which oscillators are coupled to the mean field with random signs is investigated in this work. We focus on a situation in which the natural frequencies of oscillators follow a uniform probability density. By numerically simulating the model, we find that the model supports a modulated travelling wave state except for already reported π state and travelling wave state in the one with natural frequencies followingLorenztian probability density or a delta function. The dependence of the observed dynamics on the parameters of the model is explored and we find that the onset of synchronization in the model displays a non-monotonic dependence on both positive and negative coupling strength.     

Contractivity of Transport Distances for the Kinetic Kuramoto Equation

We present synchronization and contractivity estimates for the kinetic Kuramoto model obtained from the Kuramoto phase model in the mean-field limit. For identical Kuramoto oscillators, we present an admissible class of initial data leading to time-asymptotic complete synchronization, that is, all measure valued solutions converge to the traveling Dirac measure concentrated on the initial averaged phase. In the case of non-identical oscillators, we show that the velocity field converges to the average natural frequency proving that the oscillators move asymptotically with the same frequency under suitable assumptions on the initial configuration. If two initial Radon measures have the same natural frequency density function and strength of coupling, we show that the Wasserstein \(p\) -distance between corresponding measure valued solutions is exponentially decreasing in time. This contraction principle is more general than previous \(L^1\) -contraction properties of the Kuramoto phase model.     

Relaxation dynamics of the Kuramoto model with uniformly distributed natural frequencies

The Kuramoto model describes a system of globally coupled phase-only oscillators with distributed natural frequencies. The model in the steady state exhibits a phase transition as a function of the coupling strength, between a low-coupling incoherent phase in which the oscillators oscillate independently and a high-coupling synchronized phase. Here, we consider a uniform distribution for the natural frequencies, for which the phase transition is known to be of first order. We study how the system close to the phase transition in the supercritical regime relaxes in time to the steady state while starting from an initial incoherent state. In this case, numerical simulations of finite systems have demonstrated that the relaxation occurs as a step-like jump in the order parameter from the initial to the final steady state value, hinting at the existence of metastable states. We provide numerical evidence to suggest that the observed metastability is a finite-size effect, becoming an increasingly rare event with increasing system size.     

Four-cluster chimera state in non-locally coupled phase oscillator systems with an external potential

Dynamics of a one-dimensional array of non-locally coupled Kuramoto phase oscillators with an external potential is studied. A four-cluster chimera state is observed for the moderate strength of the external potential. Different from the clustered chimera states studied before, the instantaneous frequencies of the oscillators in a synchronized cluster are different in the presence of the external potential. As the strength of the external potential increases, a bifurcation from the two-cluster chimera state to the four-cluster chimera states can be found. These phenomena are well predicted analytically with the help of the Ott-Antonsen ansatz.     

Structure of long-term average frequencies for kuramoto oscillator systems

We study the long-term average frequency as a function of the natural frequency for Kuramoto oscillators with periodic coefficients. Unlike the case for more general periodically forced oscillators, this function is never a "devil's staircase"; it may have plateaus at integer multiples of the forcing frequency, but we prove it is strictly increasing between these plateaus. The proof uses the fact that the flow maps for Kuramoto oscillators extend to M?bius transformations on the complex plane, and that M?bius transformations have particularly simple dynamics that rule out p∶q mode locking except in the case of fixed points (q=1). We also give a criterion for the degeneration of an integer plateau to a single point and use it to explain the absence of plateaus at even multiples of the collective frequency for a Kuramoto system with a bimodal frequency distribution.     

Disordered spherical model

The most general expression of the free energy in the disordered spherical model is obtained. Based on this expression the following are shown, (a) The ferromagnetic order in the translationally invariant spherical model is unstable against an arbitrarily small random field ifd 4. (b) Straightforward generalization of the spherical model to the disordered case for a finite-range interaction has some rather unnatural properties: the phase transition in the model exists even in one dimension, and even in the case of ferromagnetic interaction it does not vanish as a homogeneous external field is switched on and spontaneous magnetization is zero forT _c . (c) For the ferromagnetic interaction, a modification of the disordered spherical model is proposed which does not have such properties and displays the behavior expected for the disordered ferromagnets. The paper also discusses the role of fluctuation (cluster) effects and the structure of the spontaneous magnetization field for the disordered spherical model. The results essentially rest upon the spectral properties of random self-adjoint operators obtained by the author earlier and in the present paper.