Synchronization of cooperative and competitive oscillators in dynamical network

Abstract

Synchronization is a collective behavior that occurs spontaneously, describing the coherence of a collection of dynamic units of a system. The competitive and cooperative behavior of the synchronization process as the simplest synergistic behaviors can promote or inhibit each other, which has been widely investigated for its practical significance in recent years. Here, we report that the synchronization phase transition type can be tuned by adjusting the balance between the two oscillator types and the communication radius of the dynamical network in a population dynamical network with uniformly distributed competitive and cooperative oscillators. Agents of both cooperative and competitive oscillators move and interact only with their neighbors in a system. By numerical simulations, we demonstrate a rich process of synchronous transitions, especially that the transition can be regulated between continuous and explosive by adjusting the balance between the two oscillator types under a specific dynamic network. Moreover, the communication radius of the network and the number of oscillators determine both the density of oscillators in the system, thus changing the connectivity and the synchronization characteristics of the network.