Unstable delayed feedback control to change sign of coupling strength for weakly coupled limit cycle oscillators

Weakly coupled limit cycle oscillators can be reduced into a system of weakly coupled phase models. These phase models are helpful to analyze the synchronization phenomena. For example, a phase model of two oscillators has a one-dimensional differential equation for the evolution of the phase difference. The existence of fixed points determines frequency-locking solutions. By treating each oscillator as a black-box possessing a single input and a single output, one can investigate various control algorithms to change the synchronization of the oscillators. In particular, we are interested in a delayed feedback control algorithm. Application of this algorithm to the oscillators after a subsequent phase reduction should give the same phase model as in the control-free case, but with a rescaled coupling strength. The conventional delayed feedback control is limited to the change of magnitude but does not allow the change of sign of the coupling strength. In this work, we present a modification of the delayed feedback algorithm supplemented by an additional unstable degree of freedom, which is able to change the sign of the coupling strength. Various numerical calculations performed with Landau-Stuart and FitzHugh-Nagumo oscillators show successful switching between an in-phase and anti-phase synchronization using the provided control algorithm. Additionally, we show that the control force becomes non-invasive if our objective is stabilization of an unstable phase difference for two coupled oscillators.