Dynamical mechanism of anticipating synchronization in excitable systems

TL;DR

This paper explains how unidirectional delayed coupling causes anticipating synchronization in excitable systems by lowering the excitability threshold of the slave, leading to different response times to the same external forcing.

Contribution

It provides a simple explanation of the mechanism behind anticipating synchronization in excitable systems through threshold modulation due to coupling.

Findings

The slave system has a lower excitability threshold than the master.

Coupling causes the slave to respond earlier to external forcing.

The mechanism explains the phenomenon of anticipating synchronization.

Abstract

We analyze the phenomenon of anticipating synchronization of two excitable systems with unidirectional delayed coupling which are subject to the same external forcing. We demonstrate for different paradigms of excitable system that, due to the coupling, the excitability threshold for the slave system is always lower than that for the master. As a consequence the two systems respond to a common external forcing with different response times. This allows to explain in a simple way the mechanism behind the phenomenon of anticipating synchronization.