No Arabic abstract
Several complex systems can be modeled as large networks in which the state of the nodes continuously evolves through interactions among neighboring nodes, forming a high-dimensional nonlinear dynamical system. One of the main challenges of Network Science consists in predicting the impact of network topology and dynamics on the evolution of the states and, especially, on the emergence of collective phenomena, such as synchronization. We address this problem by proposing a Dynamics Approximate Reduction Technique (DART) that maps high-dimensional (complete) dynamics unto low-dimensional (reduced) dynamics while preserving the most salient features, both topological and dynamical, of the original system. DART generalizes recent approaches for dimension reduction by allowing the treatment of complex-valued dynamical variables, heterogeneities in the intrinsic properties of the nodes as well as modular networks with strongly interacting communities. Most importantly, we identify three major reduction procedures whose relative accuracy depends on whether the evolution of the states is mainly determined by the intrinsic dynamics, the degree sequence, or the adjacency matrix. We use phase synchronization of oscillator networks as a benchmark for our threefold method. We successfully predict the synchronization curves for three phase dynamics (Winfree, Kuramoto, theta) on the stochastic block model. Moreover, we obtain the bifurcations of the Kuramoto-Sakaguchi model on the mean stochastic block model with asymmetric blocks and we show numerically the existence of periphery chimera state on the two-star graph. This allows us to highlight the critical role played by the asymmetry of community sizes on the existence of chimera states. Finally, we systematically recover well-known analytical results on explosive synchronization by using DART for the Kuramoto-Sakaguchi model on the star graph.
Synchronization has been the subject of intense research during decades mainly focused on determining the structural and dynamical conditions driving a set of interacting units to a coherent state globally stable. However, little attention has been paid to the description of the dynamical development of each individual networked unit in the process towards the synchronization of the whole ensemble. In this paper, we show how in a network of identical dynamical systems, nodes belonging to the same degree class differentiate in the same manner visiting a sequence of states of diverse complexity along the route to synchronization independently on the global network structure. In particular, we observe, just after interaction starts pulling orbits from the initially uncoupled attractor, a general reduction of the complexity of the dynamics of all units being more pronounced in those with higher connectivity. In the weak coupling regime, when synchronization starts to build up, there is an increase in the dynamical complexity whose maximum is achieved, in general, first in the hubs due to their earlier synchronization with the mean field. For very strong coupling, just before complete synchronization, we found a hierarchical dynamical differentiation with lower degree nodes being the ones exhibiting the largest complexity departure. We unveil how this differentiation route holds for several models of nonlinear dynamics including toroidal chaos and how it depends on the coupling function. This study provides new insights to understand better strategies for network identification and control or to devise effective methods for network inference.
Model reduction techniques have been widely used to study the collective behavior of globally coupled oscillators. However, most approaches assume that there are infinitely many oscillators. Here we propose a new ansatz, based on the collective coordinate approach, that reproduces the collective dynamics of the Kuramoto model for finite networks to high accuracy, yields the same bifurcation structure in the thermodynamic limit of infinitely many oscillators as previous approaches, and additionally captures the dynamics of the order parameter in the thermodynamic limit, including critical slowing down that results from a cascade of saddle-node bifurcations.
We consider the inertial Kuramoto model of $N$ globally coupled oscillators characterized by both their phase and angular velocity, in which there is a time delay in the interaction between the oscillators. Besides the academic interest, we show that the model can be related to a network of phase-locked loops widely used in electronic circuits for generating a stable frequency at multiples of an input frequency. We study the model for a generic choice of the natural frequency distribution of the oscillators, to elucidate how a synchronized phase bifurcates from an incoherent phase as the coupling constant between the oscillators is tuned. We show that in contrast to the case with no delay, here the system in the stationary state may exhibit either a subcritical or a supercritical bifurcation between a synchronized and an incoherent phase, which is dictated by the value of the delay present in the interaction and the precise value of inertia of the oscillators. Our theoretical analysis, performed in the limit $N to infty$, is based on an unstable manifold expansion in the vicinity of the bifurcation, which we apply to the kinetic equation satisfied by the single-oscillator distribution function. We check our results by performing direct numerical integration of the dynamics for large $N$, and highlight the subtleties arising from having a finite number of oscillators.
Synchronization is an important behavior that characterizes many natural and human made systems composed by several interacting units. It can be found in a broad spectrum of applications, ranging from neuroscience to power-grids, to mention a few. Such systems synchronize because of the complex set of coupling they exhibit, the latter being modeled by complex networks. The dynamical behavior of the system and the topology of the underlying network are strongly intertwined, raising the question of the optimal architecture that makes synchronization robust. The Master Stability Function (MSF) has been proposed and extensively studied as a generic framework to tackle synchronization problems. Using this method, it has been shown that for a class of models, synchronization in strongly directed networks is robust to external perturbations. In this paper, our approach is to transform the non-autonomous system of coupled oscillators into an autonomous one, showing that previous results are model-independent. Recent findings indicate that many real-world networks are strongly directed, being potential candidates for optimal synchronization. Inspired by the fact that highly directed networks are also strongly non-normal, in this work, we address the matter of non-normality by pointing out that standard techniques, such as the MSF, may fail in predicting the stability of synchronized behavior. These results lead to a trade-off between non-normality and directedness that should be properly considered when designing an optimal network, enhancing the robustness of synchronization.
The behavior at bifurcation from global synchronization to partial synchronization in finite networks of coupled oscillators is a complex phenomenon, involving the intricate dynamics of one or more oscillators with the remaining synchronized oscillators. This is not captured well by standard macroscopic model reduction techniques which capture only the collective behavior of synchronized oscillators in the thermodynamic limit. We introduce two mesoscopic model reductions for finite sparse networks of coupled oscillators to quantitatively capture the dynamics close to bifurcation from global to partial synchronization. Our model reduction builds upon the method of collective coordinates. We first show that standard collective coordinate reduction has difficulties capturing this bifurcation. We identify a particular topological structure at bifurcation consisting of a main synchronized cluster, the oscillator that desynchronizes at bifurcation, and an intermediary node connecting them. Utilizing this structure and ensemble averages we derive an analytic expression for the mismatch between the true bifurcation from global to partial synchronization and its estimate calculated via the collective coordinate approach. This allows to calibrate the standard collective coordinate approach without prior knowledge of which node will desynchronize. We introduce a second mesoscopic reduction, utilizing the same particular topological structure, which allows for a quantitative dynamical description of the phases near bifurcation. The mesoscopic reductions significantly reduce the computational complexity of the collective coordinate approach, reducing from $mathcal{O}(N^2)$ to $mathcal{O}(1)$. We perform numerical simulations for ErdH{o}s-Renyi networks and for modified Barabasi-Albert networks demonstrating excellent quantitative agreement at and close to bifurcation.