TY - JOUR

T1 - Chimera States in Mechanical Oscillator Networks

AU - Martens, Erik Andreas

AU - Thutupalli, Shashi

AU - Fourrière, Antoine

AU - Hallatschek, Oskar

PY - 2013

Y1 - 2013

N2 - The synchronization of coupled oscillators is a fascinating manifestation of self- organization that nature employs to orchestrate essential processes of life, such as the beating of the heart. While it was long thought that synchrony or disorder were mutually exclusive steady states for a network of identical oscillators, numerous the- oretical studies in recent years revealed the intriguing possibility of ‘chimera states’, in which the symmetry of the oscillator population is broken into a synchronous and an asynchronous part. However, a striking lack of empirical evidence raises the question of whether chimeras are indeed characteristic to 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 behaviour, such as power grids, opto-mechanical crystals or cells communicating via quorum sensing in microbial populations.

AB - The synchronization of coupled oscillators is a fascinating manifestation of self- organization that nature employs to orchestrate essential processes of life, such as the beating of the heart. While it was long thought that synchrony or disorder were mutually exclusive steady states for a network of identical oscillators, numerous the- oretical studies in recent years revealed the intriguing possibility of ‘chimera states’, in which the symmetry of the oscillator population is broken into a synchronous and an asynchronous part. However, a striking lack of empirical evidence raises the question of whether chimeras are indeed characteristic to 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 behaviour, such as power grids, opto-mechanical crystals or cells communicating via quorum sensing in microbial populations.

KW - Chimera states,kuramoto model,mechanical oscillators,nonlocal coupling,oscillator network

U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1302880110

DO - 10.1073/pnas.1302880110

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 23759743

VL - 110

SP - 10563

EP - 10567

JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

SN - 0027-8424

IS - 26

ER -