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Nonlinear dynamics

Spontaneous synchrony breaking

Nature Physics volume 6, pages 164–165 (2010)Cite this article

Research on synchronization of coupled oscillators has helped explain how uniform behaviour emerges in populations of non-uniform systems. But explaining how uniform populations engage in 'chimera states' — states of sustainable non-uniform synchronization — may prove to be just as fascinating.

Synchronization phenomena continue to inform and surprise. In classical and quantum physics, the harmonic oscillator is a paradigmatic model both because it describes periodic behaviour found in a wide variety of systems and because it provides insights into more general behaviour. Similarly, the study of networks of coupled oscillatory dynamical entities has a lot to offer for the understanding of emergent behaviour in complex systems. The strongest form of such collective behaviour is spontaneous synchronization, in which the oscillators coordinate their dynamics in a decentralized way. Spontaneous synchronization occurs in diverse contexts, from communities of chirping crickets to arrays of pulsing lasers. Its study has helped explain how heterogeneous entities, such as the cricket populations, can adjust their 'rhythms' exclusively as a result of their interactions. Writing in Physical Review Letters1, Erik Martens, Carlo Laing and Steven Strogatz now address the reciprocal to this question: they investigate the surprising scenario in which identical oscillators with identical coupling patterns self-organize into subpopulations with different synchronous behaviour.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Adilson E. Motter is in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and at the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA. motter@northwestern.edu,

    Adilson E. Motter

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  1. Adilson E. Motter
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Motter, A. Spontaneous synchrony breaking. Nature Phys 6, 164–165 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys1609

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