Journal article · Preprint article
Chimera states in mechanical oscillator networks
The synchronization of coupled oscillators is a fascinating manifestation of self-organization that nature uses to orchestrate essential processes of life, such as the beating of the heart. Although it was long thought that synchrony and disorder were mutually exclusive steady states for a network of identical oscillators, numerous theoretical studies in recent years have revealed the intriguing possibility of "chimera states," in which the symmetry of the oscillator population is broken into a synchronous part and an asynchronous part.
However, a striking lack of empirical evidence raises the question of whether chimeras are indeed characteristic of natural systems. This calls for a palpable realization of chimera states without any fine-tuning, from which physical mechanisms underlying their emergence can be uncovered. Here, we devise a simple experiment with mechanical oscillators coupled in a hierarchical network to show that chimeras emerge naturally from a competition between two antagonistic synchronization patterns.
We identify a wide spectrum of complex states, encompassing and extending the set of previously described chimeras. Our mathematical model shows that the self-organization observed in our experiments is controlled by elementary dynamical equations from mechanics that are ubiquitous in many natural and technological systems.
The symmetry-breaking mechanism revealed by our experiments may thus be prevalent in systems exhibiting collective behavior, such as power grids, optomechanical crystals, or cells communicating via quorum sensing in microbial populations
Language: | English |
---|---|
Publisher: | National Academy of Sciences |
Year: | 2013 |
Pages: | 10563-10567 |
ISSN: | 10916490 and 00278424 |
Types: | Journal article and Preprint article |
DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.1302880110 |
ORCIDs: | Martens, Erik Andreas |
Animals Biological Clocks Biomechanical Phenomena Biophysical Phenomena Chimera states,kuramoto model,mechanical oscillators,nonlocal coupling,oscillator network Humans Models, Biological Models, Theoretical Nonlinear Dynamics Oscillometry Physical Phenomena Physical Sciences Physics Quorum Sensing cond-mat.stat-mech ensemble dynamics nlin.AO nlin.PS nonlinear dynamics physics.class-ph statistical physics