Dynamics of oscillator populations with disorder in the coupling phase shifts

Abstract

Abstract We study populations of oscillators, all-to-all coupled by means of quenched disordered phase shifts. While there is no traditional synchronization transition with a nonvanishing Kuramoto order parameter, the system demonstrates a specific order as the coupling strength increases. This order is characterized by partial phase locking, which is put into evidence by the introduced novel correlation order parameter, which is shown to grow monotonically with the coupling strength, and via frequency entrainment by following concentration of the oscillators frequencies. Simulations with phase oscillators, Stuart–Landau oscillators, and chaotic Roessler oscillators demonstrate similar scaling of the correlation order parameter with the coupling and the system size and also similar behavior of the frequencies with maximal entrainment (at which the standard deviation of the frequencies is reduced by a factor close to four) at some finite coupling.