English

Heteroclinic Ratchets in a System of Four Coupled Oscillators

Adaptation and Self-Organizing Systems 2009-11-10 v1

Abstract

We study an unusual but robust phenomenon that appears in an example system of four coupled phase oscillators. We show that the system can have a robust attractor that responds to a specific detuning between certain pairs of the oscillators by a breaking of phase locking for arbitrary positive detunings but not for negative detunings. As the dynamical mechanism behind this is a particular type of heteroclinic network, we call this a 'heteroclinic ratchet' because of its dynamical resemblance to a mechanical ratchet.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0811.1012,
  title  = {Heteroclinic Ratchets in a System of Four Coupled Oscillators},
  author = {O. Karabacak and P. Ashwin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0811.1012},
  year   = {2009}
}