Active synchronization and ordering of coupled oscillators

Tirthankar Banerjee, Abhik Basu

Published 2016-05-02Version 1

How to control synchronization and order in a collection of interacting oscillators remains a challenging question. We address this by constructing a hydrodynamic theory for {\em active} phase fluctuations in a collection of nearly phase-coherent oscillators, dynamically coupled to a diffusive species, in two dimensions. We show that the interplay between the active effects and the diffusion coefficient of the diffusing species leads to a variety of phenomena, ranging from synchronization with long range, nearly long range and quasi long range orders to instabilities and desynchronization with short range order of the oscillator phases. Our results highlight sensitive dependences of synchronization on the active effects. These should be testable in oscillating chemical reactions in the presence of different reaction inhibitors/ facilitators, in oriented cytoskeletal extracts with motors, or chemotaxing, live, chiral, oriented, microbial suspensions.