Stability of heteroclinic cycles in rings of coupled oscillators

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of heteroclinic cycles in ring networks of coupled oscillators, revealing conditions for their asymptotic stability and implications for non-ergodic dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of asymptotically stable heteroclinic cycles in ring networks, highlighting their role in non-ergodic behavior in coupled oscillator systems.

Findings

Existence of heteroclinic cycles in ring networks

At least one cycle can be asymptotically stable

Non-ergodic dynamics are expected in these systems

Abstract

Networks of interacting nodes connected by edges arise in almost every branch of scientific enquiry. The connectivity structure of the network can force the existence of invariant subspaces, which would not arise in generic dynamical systems. These invariant subspaces can result in the appearance of robust heteroclinic cycles, which would otherwise be structurally unstable. Typically, the dynamics near a stable heteroclinic cycle is non-ergodic: mean residence times near the fixed points in the cycle are undefined, and there is a persistent slowing down. In this paper, we examine ring networks with nearest-neighbour or nearest-m-neighbour coupling, and show that there exist classes of heteroclinic cycles in the phase space of the dynamics. We show that there is always at least one heteroclinic cycle which can be asymptotically stable, and thus the attracting dynamics of the network are expected to be non-ergodic. We conjecture that much of this behaviour persists in less structured networks and as such, non-ergodic behaviour is somehow typical.