Clustered chimera states in delay-coupled oscillator systems

Gautam C. Sethia, Abhijit Sen, and Fatihcan M. Atay

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Submission date: 16. Apr. 2008
Pages: 12
published in: Physical review letters, 100 (2008) 14, art-no. 144102 
DOI number (of the published article): 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.144102
Bibtex
PACS-Numbers: 05.45.Xt, 89.75.Kd
Keywords and phrases: pattern formation, synchronization, time delay
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Abstract:
We investigate chimera states in a ring of identical phase oscillators coupled in a time-delayed and spatially non-local fashion. We find novel clustered chimera states that have spatially distributed phase coherence separated by incoherence with adjacent coherent regions in anti-phase. The existence of such time-delay induced phase clustering is further supported through solutions of a generalized functional self-consistency equation of the mean field. Our results highlight an additional mechanism for cluster formation that may find wider practical applications.