Interplay of inertia and heterogeneous dynamics in an ensemble of Kuramoto oscillators

Abstract

We study the dynamic interplay between inertia and heterogeneous dynamics in an ensemble of Kuramoto oscillators. When external fields and internal forces are exerted on a system of Kuramoto oscillators, each oscillator has its own distinct dynamics, so that there is no notion of collective dynamics in the ensemble, and complete synchronization is not observed in such systems. In this paper, we study a relaxed version of synchronization, namely the “practical synchronization”, of Kuramoto oscillators, emerging from the dynamic interplay between inertia and heterogeneous decoupled dynamics. We will show that for some class of initial configurations and parameters, the fluctuation of phases and frequencies around the average values will be proportional to the inverse of the coupling strength. We provide several numerical examples, and compare these with our analytical results.