Chimeras and clusters emerging from robust-chaos dynamics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that networks of robust-chaos oscillators can exhibit complex collective behaviors like clustering and chimera states, challenging previous assumptions about chaos dynamics limitations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of robust-chaos networks, showing they can form clusters and chimeras, and links these phenomena to periodicity windows and multistability induced by coupling.

Findings

Clusters and chimeras emerge in robust-chaos networks.

Robust-chaos does not prevent the formation of complex states.

The behavior is linked to periodicity windows and multistability.

Abstract

We show that dynamical clustering, where a system segregates into distinguishable subsets of synchronized elements, and chimera states, where differentiated subsets of synchronized and desynchronized elements coexist, can emerge in networks of globally coupled robust-chaos oscillators. We describe the collective behavior of a model of globally coupled robust-chaos maps in terms of statistical quantities, and characterize clusters, chimera states, synchronization, and incoherence on the space of parameters of the system. We employ the analogy between the local dynamics of a system of globally coupled maps with the response dynamics of a single driven map. We interpret the occurrence of clusters and chimeras in a globally coupled system of robust-chaos maps in terms of windows of periodicity and multistability induced by a drive on the local robust-chaos map. Our results show that robust-chaos dynamics does not limit the formation of cluster and chimera states in networks of coupled systems, as it had been previously conjectured.