Chimera states for coupled oscillators

Phys Rev Lett. 2004 Oct 22;93(17):174102. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.174102. Epub 2004 Oct 22.

Abstract

Arrays of identical oscillators can display a remarkable spatiotemporal pattern in which phase-locked oscillators coexist with drifting ones. Discovered two years ago, such "chimera states" are believed to be impossible for locally or globally coupled systems; they are peculiar to the intermediate case of nonlocal coupling. Here we present an exact solution for this state, for a ring of phase oscillators coupled by a cosine kernel. We show that the stable chimera state bifurcates from a spatially modulated drift state, and dies in a saddle-node bifurcation with an unstable chimera state.