Birth and Death of Chimera: Interplay of Delay and Multiplexing

TL;DR

This paper explores how delay and multiplexing in layered networks influence the emergence and suppression of chimera states, revealing complex dynamical behaviors relevant to real-world multi-layered systems.

Contribution

It introduces the impact of delay distribution and parity on chimera states in multiplex networks with chaotic maps, including the discovery of layer-specific chimera states.

Findings

Delay and multiplexing can enhance or suppress chimera states.

Layer chimera states with mixed coherence and incoherence are observed.

The results provide insights into multi-layered real-world networks with delays.

Abstract

The chimera state with co-existing coherent-incoherent dynamics has recently attracted a lot of attention due to its wide applicability. We investigate non-locally coupled identical chaotic maps with delayed interactions in the multiplex network framework and find that an interplay of delay and multiplexing brings about an enhanced or suppressed appearance of chimera state depending on the distribution as well as the parity of delay values in the layers. Additionally, we report a layer chimera state with an existence of one layer displaying coherent and another layer demonstrating incoherent dynamical evolution. The rich variety of dynamical behavior demonstrated here can be used to gain further insight into the real-world networks which inherently possess such multi-layer architecture with delayed interactions.