Collective effects induced by diversity in extended systems

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that diversity in extended systems, such as quenched noise, can enhance response and induce collective firing, revealing constructive effects of heterogeneity in nonlinear dynamics.

Contribution

It shows how quenched noise can positively influence the dynamics of coupled systems, including bistable models and active-rotators, revealing new collective behaviors.

Findings

Diversity enhances the response of bistable systems to periodic forcing.

Disorder triggers collective firing in active-rotator models.

Simple diversity can induce complex collective phenomena.

Abstract

We show that diversity, in the form of quenched noise, can have a constructive effect in the dynamics of extended systems. We first consider a bistable $\phi^4$ model composed by many coupled units and show that the global response to an external periodic forcing is enhanced under the presence of the right amount of diversity (measured as the dispersion in one of the parameters defining the model). As a second example, we consider a system of active-rotators and show that while they are at rest in the homogeneous case, the disorder introduced by the diversity suffices to trigger the appearance of common firings or pulses. Both effects require very simple ingredients and we expect the results presented here to be of interest in similar models.