Rare slips in fluctuating synchronized oscillator networks

TL;DR

This paper investigates rare phase slips caused by noise in synchronized oscillator networks, revealing how network topology and frequency distribution influence the occurrence and scaling of these slips.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of noise-induced phase slips in Kuramoto networks, deriving scaling laws and highlighting differences between sparse and dense topologies.

Findings

Slips occur via large fluctuations to saddle states.

In tree networks, slips happen between disconnected subgraphs at bifurcations.

Probability of slips scales linearly with system size for discrete distributions.

Abstract

We study rare phase slips due to noise in synchronized Kuramoto oscillator networks. In the small-noise limit, we demonstrate that slips occur via large fluctuations to saddle phase-locked states. For tree topologies, slips appear between subgraphs that become disconnected at a saddle-node bifurcation, where phase-locked states lose stability generically. This pattern is demonstrated for sparse networks with several examples. Scaling laws are derived and compared for different tree topologies. On the other hand, for dense networks slips occur between oscillators on the edges of the frequency distribution. If the distribution is discrete, the probability-exponent for large fluctuations to occur scales linearly with the system size. However, if the distribution is continuous, the probability is a constant in the large network limit, as individual oscillators fluctuate to saddles while all others remain fixed. In the latter case, the network's coherence is approximately preserved.