Traveling spiral wave chimeras in coupled oscillator systems: emergence, dynamics, and transitions

Abstract

Abstract Systems of coupled nonlinear oscillators often exhibit states of partial synchrony in which some of the oscillators oscillate coherently while the rest remain incoherent. If such a state emerges spontaneously, in other words, if it cannot be associated with any heterogeneity in the system, it is generally referred to as a chimera state. In planar oscillator arrays, these chimera states can take the form of rotating spiral waves surrounding an incoherent core, resembling those observed in oscillatory or excitable media, and may display complex dynamical behavior. To understand this behavior we study stationary and moving chimera states in planar phase oscillator arrays using a combination of direct numerical simulations and numerical continuation of solutions of the corresponding continuum limit, focusing on the existence and properties of traveling spiral wave chimeras as a function of the system parameters. The oscillators are coupled nonlocally and their frequencies are drawn from a Lorentzian distribution. Two cases are discussed in detail, that of a top-hat coupling function and a two-parameter truncated Fourier approximation to this function in Cartesian coordinates. The latter allows semi-analytical progress, including determination of stability properties, leading to a classification of possible behaviors of both static and moving chimera states. The transition from stationary to moving chimeras is shown to be accompanied by the appearance of complex filamentary structures within the incoherent spiral wave core representing secondary coherence regions associated with temporal resonances. As the parameters are varied the number of such filaments may grow, a process reflected in a series of folds in the corresponding bifurcation diagram showing the drift speed s as a function of the phase-lag parameter α.