Desynchronization of jammed oscillators by avalanches

Synchrony is inevitable in many oscillating systems—from the canonical alignment of two ticking grandfather clocks, to mutual entrainment beating flagella or spiking neurons. Yet both biological and man-made systems provide striking examples spontaneous desynchronization, such as failure cascades alternating current power grids neuronal avalanches mammalian brain. Here, we generalize classical models synchronization among heterogenous oscillators include short-range phase repulsion individuals, a property that allows emergence stable desynchronized state. Surprisingly, find our model exhibits self-organized at intermediate values strength, these have similar statistical properties seen real-world avalanches. We arise due critical mechanism based on competition between mean-field recruitment local displacement, replicate cellular automaton traffic jams. exactly solve system many-oscillator limit, obtain analytical results relating onset partial synchrony relative heterogeneity their degree repulsion. Our minimal analytically tractable example complex dynamics driven system.2 MoreReceived 2 December 2020Accepted 17 May 2021DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.023206Published by American Physical Society under terms Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution this work must maintain attribution author(s) published article's title, journal citation, DOI.Published SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasCoupled oscillatorsSelf-organized criticalitySynchronizationNonlinear Dynamics