The dynamics of chimera states in heterogeneous Kuramoto networks (Q843005)

The paper presents a number of analytical results concerning emergence and stability of chimera states in networks of coupled phase oscillators. The chimera states have previously been discovered as a surprise in networks of symmetrically coupled identical oscillators, where the population spontaneously splits into synchronized and desynchronized subpopulations. The present paper reports on the existence and stability of the chimera states for nonidentical oscillators if a heterogeneity of the natural frequencies is introduced. It is shown that a power-law ansatz for the probability density function recently discovered by Ott and Antonsen provides an effective tool for the investigation of stationary states of the evolutionary equation of the network. The paper addresses a variety of models including one- and two-dimensional oscillator arrays with non-local coupling, all-to-all coupled networks with inhomogeneous coupling strengths as well as delay-coupled oscillator ensembles. Bifurcation analysis of the stationary chimera states demonstrates that these states are robust with respect to small heterogeneity in the networks. The obtained analytical results are illustrated by numerical simulations.