Phase-locking effects in a system of nonlinear oscillators

Models for the excitation of collective modes in a system of nonlinear classical oscillators, initially out of phase, are discussed. The oscillators may be coupled in a dissipative or conservative manner. The analysis is based on the results of recent studies dealing with the problem of the free excitation of a coherent pulse, analogous to "superradiance" in two-level quantum systems. Several physical examples from the realms of electrodynamics and acoustics are discussed. The processes discussed here may be thought of as chaos-order transitions, provided that "chaos" is understood not as a stochastic nature of an individual oscillator but as the absence of a coherent component in their collective field.