Chimera-like states induced by additional dynamic nonlocal wirings

Area of Science:

• Complex Systems
• Nonlinear Dynamics
• Network Science

Background:

• Chimera states, a unique phenomenon in coupled oscillator networks, exhibit coexisting synchronized and desynchronized behavior.
• Previous studies primarily focused on static network topologies, limiting the understanding of dynamic influences on chimera states.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the emergence of chimera-like states in small-world networks of chaotic Rössler systems.
• To explore the role of randomly switching nonlocal links in inducing and controlling chimera states.

Main Methods:

• Simulated identical Rössler oscillators arranged in a small-world network.
• Introduced randomly switching nonlocal links between nodes.
• Varied coupling strength, number of nonlocal links, and switching times.

Main Results:

• Chimera-like states were observed only with dynamic, randomly switching nonlocal links, not with static or absent nonlocal connections.
• Increasing the number of randomly selected nodes for nonlocal links led to a shrinking incoherent region and an expanding chimera-like region.
• System synchronization was achieved faster at lower coupling strengths when chimera states were present.

Conclusions:

• Randomly switching nonlocal connections are crucial for inducing chimera-like states in these chaotic oscillator networks.
• The observed phenomena were reproducible in globally coupled Rössler oscillators and small-world networks of FitzHugh-Nagumo oscillators, suggesting broader applicability.