Existence and stability of travelling wave states in a ring of non-locally coupled phase oscillators with propagation delays

TL;DR

This paper studies the existence and stability of traveling wave solutions in a ring of non-locally coupled phase oscillators with delays, revealing complex stability regions, forbidden zones, and new breather states.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive stability diagram and uncovers novel phenomena like forbidden regions and breather states in delayed non-local oscillator systems.

Findings

Multi-stable regions depend on delay, non-locality, and frequency.

Stability domains break into disconnected regions as frequency decreases.

Forbidden regions exist where phase-locked solutions cannot occur.

Abstract

We investigate the existence and stability of travelling wave solutions in a continuum field of non-locally coupled identical phase oscillators with distance-dependent propagation delays. A comprehensive stability diagram in the parametric space of the system is presented that shows a rich structure of multi-stable regions and illuminates the relative influences of time delay, the non-locality parameter and the intrinsic oscillator frequency on the dynamics of these states. A decrease in the intrinsic oscillator frequency leads to a break-up of the stability domains of the traveling waves into disconnected regions in the parametric space. These regions exhibit a tongue structure for high connectivity whereas they submerge into the stable region of the synchronous state for low connectivity. A novel finding is the existence of forbidden regions in the parametric space where no phase-locked solutions are possible. We also discover a new class of non-stationary \textit{breather} states for this model system that are characterized by periodic oscillations of the complex order parameter.