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Oscillatory activity regulation in an ensemble of autonomous mercury beating

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DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.99.032223

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 PHYSICAL REVIEW E 99, 032223 (2019)

Oscillatory activity regulation in an ensemble of autonomous mercury beating heart oscillators

Animesh Biswas, Pawan Kumar, Dibyendu Das, and P. Parmananda
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400 076, India

(Received 14 May 2018; revised manuscript received 15 January 2019; published 29 March 2019)

Collective behavior of an ensemble of directly or indirectly coupled oscillators can be a function of

population density. Experiments using autonomous mercury beating heart (MBH) oscillators coupled through
their surroundings are employed, to study the existence of quorum-like (population dependent) phenomena.
Two coupling mechanisms are used, namely, static and dynamic coupling. For the static coupling scheme, the
transitions of a subset of the coupled oscillators occur from active (oscillatory) to inactive (quiescent) state
and vice versa. A continuous variation of collective dynamics was observed as the population of the oscillators
increased. For the dynamic coupling scheme, the time for which the coupled oscillators are active changes
sharply as the population increases beyond a certain threshold.

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.99.032223

I. INTRODUCTION variables of the system itself, it’s called static coupling

We encounter various complex systems in our every-
day lives. They may have chemical, biological, physical,
or physiological origins [1,2]. When the individual cells of
these systems interact with each other they form a network.
Collective dynamics of such networks often exhibit global
synchronization, cluster synchronization, chimera, crowd syn-
chronization, and quorum sensing under different conditions.
The interactions between the oscillators may be direct or
indirect. An example of synchronization of directly coupled
oscillators was shown by Kuramoto [2] and is seen in flashing
fireflies [3], audience applause [4], and chemical oscillators
[5,6]. However, many natural systems also interact indirectly
through their surroundings (common medium). For example,
in a biological system such as bacteria [7], they coordinate
their intracellular activities interacting through the extracel-
lular medium and modulate gene expression in response to
the changes in population density. This mechanism is known
as quorum sensing [7–9]. Another manifestation of quorum
sensing known as dynamical quorum sensing [10] has been
extensively studied experimentally and theoretically in diverse
fields such as biological [10–13], chemical [14–16], laser
optical [17], and electrical [18,19] systems. In nature as well,
some species of ants [20] and honey bees [21] use quorum
sensing to decide where to nest.
In the case of indirect coupling, the surroundings through
which oscillators interact are constituted by signals released
by the elements of the system. For example, in bacterial
medium signals this is the chemical auto-inducer molecules,
and in the neuronal ensemble it is the charge density. Ex-
change of information (signals) between the oscillators and
the surroundings induces a coupling between them. Con-
sequently, different synchronization behaviors are observed
for different types of information exchange. This infor-
mation exchange can be considered as dynamic coupling
[10,12,22,23] if the time dependence of the surroundings is
governed by a separate differential equation. In contrast, if
the surroundings depend algebraically on the other dynamical
[18,23].
In this work, we analyze the collective dynamics of an
ensemble of mercury beating heart (MBH) oscillators. Re-
cently, collective dynamics of directly coupled MBH oscil-
lators such as the synchronization of two MBH oscillators
[24], Kuramoto transition [25], explosive synchronization
[26], cessation of oscillations [27], and partial synchroniza-
tion [28] has been found. Moreover, synchronization of two
MBH oscillators has also been reported with an indirect
coupling mechanism [29]. However, a population-dependent
phenomenon in this system has not been explored to the
best of our knowledge. In this work, population-dependent
behavior of the mechanical activity of MBH oscillators has
been studied. A mechanical oscillatory (nonoscillatory) state
of the mercury drop is considered as the active (inactive) state
for the system. The motivation for this work is based on the
experimental study of dynamial quorum sensing in Chua’s
oscillators [18] and a theoretical study involving chaotic oscil-
lators [22]. Thus, the static and dynamic coupling mechanisms
employed in this work are inspired by the two references
mentioned above. Experimental results for the static coupling
scheme are presented in Sec. II, and that is followed by the
results using a dynamic coupling in Sec. III.
II. STATIC COUPLING THROUGH SURROUNDING
The time evolution of N oscillators indirectly cou-
pled through surroundings under the static coupling pro-
tocol is described mathematically by the following set of
equations [18]:
  N
dXi Xi Xj
= Fi + γ Si − , Si = . (1)
dt N −1 j=i
N −1
Here Xi is the voltage of the ith oscillator, Fi represents
the nonlinear time evolution function, and Si represents the
voltage provided by the surroundings for the ith oscillator.

2470-0045/2019/99(3)/032223(6) 032223-1 ©2019 American Physical Society

BISWAS, KUMAR, DAS, AND PARMANANDA
FIG. 1. Schematic circuit diagram to implement the static cou-
pling for the (i = 1) autonomous MBH oscillator with its surround-
ings. Configurations for (a) the emergence of oscillations and (b) the
extinction of oscillations. (c) Surrounding dynamics for the ith (i =
1) MBH oscillator.
Note that i = 1, 2, . . . , N, and so there are N equations of
type (1). Fi is known for a closely related system [30]. The
parameter “γ ” is the coupling strength between the oscillators
and the surroundings. In the experiment, the γ factor is
regulated by tuning the coupling resistance RC [see Figs. 1(a)
and 1(b)]. The coupling term γ (Si − N−1 Xi
) depends on the
system size (N ). As N increases, the surrounding dynamics
dominate the intrinsic dynamics of the ith oscillator. The fac-
tor of (N − 1) instead of N is present because the oscillators
are not self-interacting in nature. Equation (1) is equivalent
to the static coupling definition used by Konishi [Eq. (1)
in Ref. [23]].
A. Experimental setup
In Figs. 1(a) and 1(b), schematic diagrams of a single
MBH oscillator (i = 1) coupled to its surroundings S1 are
shown. The schematic diagram in Fig. 1(c) shows how the
surroundings S1 is created for the first MBH oscillator from
the other (N − 1) oscillators. We will show the emergence
of oscillations when the circuit shown in Fig. 1(a) is used in
conjunction with the circuit shown in Fig. 1(c). The extinction
032223-2
PHYSICAL REVIEW E 99, 032223 (2019)
of oscillations is obtained when the circuit shown in Fig. 1(b)
is used in conjunction with the circuit shown in Fig. 1(c).
The coupling and surrounding terms are implemented on the
breadboard using electronic components such as resistors and
op-amps (741-IC).
Each MBH oscillator is a 2 ml mercury drop placed
inside a hemispherical container, and a pointed iron nail
(2 mm diameter, purity 99.0%, Alfa Aesar) is placed in the
container at an appropriate position near the mercury drop.
The container is made of inert polypropylene of diameter
4.3 cm and is filled with an electrolytic solution of sulfuric
acid (H2 SO4 , Merck, Emparta Acs, 98.0%) and potassium
dichromate (K2 Cr 2 O7 , Merck, a strong oxidizing agent). The
concentrations of H2 SO4 and K2 Cr 2 O7 that are used in the
two experimental situations (namely, emergence of oscilla-
tions and extinction of oscillations), are different and are
mentioned in the Results section. The electrolyte solution
level is maintained high enough in the tray (a tray of multiple
hemispherical containers) such that each container shares the
common solution. The expansion and contraction of a drop
called the “breathing mode” [31] is chosen as the operating
mode (mechanical activity) for the MBH oscillators. The
mechanical activities (oscillations) of the MBH oscillators
are quantified via image analysis performed using MATLAB.
Videos are recorded using a camera (GoPro, CHDHY-401-
EU) at the rate of 120 frames per second. The snapshots
from the recorded videos are analysed by measuring the two-
dimensional normalized projected areas of each mercury drop.
The mechanical oscillations of the MBH oscillators are char-
acterized by the time series of the normalized projected areas
[Figs. 2(b) and Fig. 4(a) below]. Platinum wires (0.33 mm of
diameter, 99.99% pure, Sigma Aldrich) are inserted through
a small hole from the bottom of the containers to provide an
inert contact with the mercury drops.
It must be noted that, though we will analyze and quantify
the results observing the mechanical oscillations of the os-
cillators, the oscillators are coupled electrically through their
electrode potentials via a resistance. All the oscillators have
a common ground (via iron nails), and the signals (electrode
potentials) of the oscillators are obtained with respect to the
common ground (iron nails). For the “emergence of oscilla-
tions” scenario in Fig. 1(a), current R1C (Si − N−1
Xi
) through the
coupling resistance Rc yields the interaction term in Eq. (1).
For the “extinction of oscillations” case, in Fig. 1(b), current
−1
Rc
(Si − N−1
Xi
) yields the interaction term. The oscillators are
strongly coupled through the surroundings (with RC < 20 
for all our experiments). The oscillators are considered as
quasi-identical due to the inherent heterogeneity in the ex-
perimental parameters. In the experiments presented here, we
worked with a maximum of N = 10 MBH oscillators. The
details of the underlying nonlinear dynamics and chemistry
of the MBH oscillator can be found in the relevant literature
[25–32].
B. Results
Here we present results for static coupling through its
surroundings. We study two different phenomena. In the first
there is a transition of oscillators from quiescent (inactive)
to the oscillatory (active) state, which we call “emergence of
OSCILLATORY ACTIVITY REGULATION IN AN …
(a) 1 0.35
0.5
A
0
Time (s)
(b)
1 0.1
A
0.5
0
Time (s)
FIG. 2. Normalized area time series (A) of the dynamical state
of a single MBH oscillator for the emergence of oscillations case
showing (a) the inactive state (before coupling) and (b) the active
state of the oscillator (after coupling).
oscillations.” In another the oscillators go from oscillatory to
the quiescent state, which we refer to as “extinction of oscilla-
tions.” Both transitions are observed by varying the oscillator
number N. While the oscillators are coupled through the
surrounding, we found a partial transition: a certain fraction of
the oscillators make a transition, while the remaining do not.
N varies from three to 10. The two phenomena studied require
a distinct set of experimental conditions and parameters. The
concentrations of the electrolyte solution (a mixture of H2 SO4
and K2 Cr2 O7 ) need to be different in the two cases. The
coupling strengths ( R1C ) are also different.
1. Emergence of oscillations
Mercury drops should not touch the iron nails initially
before coupling, while they should touch after coupling. We
choose a lesser molar concentration of electrolyte (a mixture
of 0.5 M H2 SO4 and 2 mM K2 Cr 2 O7 ) to ensure that initially
the drops do not touch the nails. After coupling, a subset of os-
cillators stays in the inactive state, while the rest of them begin
to oscillate. Figure 2 shows the dynamical state (mechanical
oscillations), before and after coupling, of a single oscillator
chosen from the subset of oscillators which are making the
transition from inactive to the active state after coupling. In
Fig. 3 we show the fraction of oscillators undergoing this
partial transition. The x axis represents the total number of os-
cillators (N ), and the y axis shows the ratio Ndead /N, wherein
Ndead is the number of oscillators retaining their initial inactive
state. The ratio (Ndead /N ) decreases as N increases, such that
the percentage of the active oscillators rise. The physical
process of transition from the inactive to the active state can be
understood as follows. In the inactive state, before coupling,
there is no contact between the iron nails and the mercury
drops. The drops are oxidized under the electrolyte solution,
and as the positive charges accumulate during the oxidation
reaction (see Refs. [25–32] for the actual chemical reactions),
the surface tension reduces, leading to the expansion of the
surface area of the mercury drops. Even after expansion, the
032223-3
PHYSICAL REVIEW E 99, 032223 (2019)
0.3
0.25
Ndead/N
0.2
0.15
0.05
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
N
FIG. 3. Ndead /N vs N plot for the inactive to active state transi-
tion. The coupling resistance RC = 10  is used. A solution of 0.5 M
H2 SO4 and 2 mM K2 Cr 2 O7 oxidizing agent is used as the common
electrolyte.
iron nails are positioned in such a way that the expanded
drops do not touch the iron nails. This scenario changes after
coupling. After coupling through the surroundings, further
positive charges are added to the drops to lower their surface
tension and expand them even more. For some of the drops,
the expansion becomes sufficient to make them touch the iron
nails and again suffer a subsequent reduction reaction (see
Refs. [25–32]). The reduction removes the charges from the
drops, and surface tension increases and contracts the surface
area. Thus contact is lost and the mercury drops shrink.
But again oxidation and charging of the drops happen and
make them expand, and the processes repeat cyclically. Thus
there are continued oscillations of the drops. In summary,
the coupling through the surroundings contributes additional
positive charges to the mercury drops (which are already
positively charged due to the electrolyte solution). As a result,
a fraction (due to the minor stochastic variations in local elec-
trolyte concentration, mercury drop size, and nail positions)
of the total number of drops, flatten enough to touch the iron
nail, and make the transition from the inactive to the active
state.
2. Extinction of oscillations
All the oscillators are initially in the oscillatory state before
coupling. To establish initially these stable oscillations for all
the oscillators, the choice of concentration of the electrolyte
(a mixture of 2 M H2 SO4 and 8 mM K2 Cr 2 O7 ) is higher in
this case. After the coupling, a subset of oscillators remains in
the active state, while the rest make a transition to the inactive
state. Figure 4 shows the dynamical state (mechanical oscilla-
tions), before and after coupling, of a single oscillator chosen
from the subset of oscillators which are making the transition
from active to the inactive state. In Fig. 5 we show the
fraction of oscillators undergoing this partial transition. The
y axis shows the ratio Nalive /N, wherein Nalive is the number
of oscillators retaining their initial active state even after the
coupling is switched on, and the x axis shows the total number
of oscillators N. Analogous to the “emergence of oscillations”
case, the ratio (Nalive /N ) decreases as the population of oscil-
lators is increased, implying the“extinction of oscillations.”
BISWAS, KUMAR, DAS, AND PARMANANDA
(a) 1
A
0.5
0
0 1
Time(s)
(b) 1
0.5
A
0 resistance. All the iron nails are connected to a common ground. The
0 1
Time (s)
FIG. 4. Normalized area time series (A) of the dynamical state of
a single MBH oscillator for the extinction of oscillation case showing
(a) the active state (before coupling) and (b) the inactive state of the
oscillator (after coupling).
The mechanism in this case is complementary to the case
of “emergence of oscillations.” Instead of positive charges,
the surroundings contribute negative charges to the active
mercury drops. The electrode potential of the oscillating mer-
cury drops is positive. The negative charges from the coupling
through the surroundings suppress the positive charges on the
drops. Due to the cancellation of charges, the oxidation and re-
duction processes stop on the drop’s surface, leading to a ces-
sation of oscillations. Again, the minor stochastic variations
in the local electrolyte concentration, mercury drop size, nail
positions, and curvature of the hemispherical container are all
important factors that determine the actual number of oscil-
lators which make the transition from active to the inactive
state.
Furthermore, continuous transitions are found in “emer-
gence of oscillations” and “extinction of oscillations.” To
summarize, we have shown above that through static indi-
rect coupling there is a population size dependence of the
FIG. 5. Nalive /N vs N plot for the active to inactive state transi-
tion. The coupling resistance is RC = 2 . A solution of 2 M H2 SO4
and 8 mM K2 Cr 2 O7 is used as the common electrolyte.
PHYSICAL REVIEW E 99, 032223 (2019)
2
FIG. 6. Schematic circuit diagram showing the oscillators are
coupled to the common medium (S̃). Rc ≈ 2  is the coupling
unequal sizes of mercury shown in the schematic diagram indicate
2 the different quantities of mercury for the oscillators and the common
medium. Each oscillator contains an equal volume of mercury drop
of 0.6 ml, and the common medium S̃ contains 13 ml of mercury
drop.
overall oscillatory or quiescent “systemic state” for the MBH
oscillators.
III. DYNAMIC COUPLING THROUGH A
COMMON MEDIUM
Now we turn to experiments in which the oscillators are
indirectly coupled through a common medium via a dynamic
coupling. The coupling mechanism of oscillators coupled
through a common medium with dynamic coupling has been
studied previously in a numerical model [10]. The mech-
anism of coupling between dynamical surroundings S̃ and
the oscillators is mathematically represented by the following
equations [29]:
dXi
= F (Xi ) + F1 (Xi , S̃), (2)
dt
d S̃
= G(S̃) + G1 (X1 , X2 , . . . , XN , S̃), (3)
dt
where Xi is the dynamical state of the ith oscillator. The func-
tion F represents the nonlinear dynamical evolution function
of the autonomous oscillators; its form is known for a related
system [30]. The coupling mechanism presented here [Eq. (2)
and Eq. (3)] is equivalent to the dynamic coupling mechanism
defined by Konishi [Eqs. (3a) and 3(b) in Ref. [23]]. In
previous theoretical models [33,34], the functional form for
the common medium was used as G(S̃) = −k S̃ such that the
common medium is quiescent in the absence of the oscilla-
tors. F1 and G1 represent the effect of coupling between the
common medium and the oscillators. The functional forms
of F1 and G1 are the same as discussed in Ref. [29]. In
our experiments, the common medium S̃ is a nonoscillatory
“modified MBH oscillator,” which does not have an iron nail
[29], and is thus an experimental analog to the theoretical
model [33,34].
The experimental setup in this section is similar to that in
Sec. II, but the parameter values and the coupling mechanism
are different. Figure 6 shows the schematic circuit diagram
for the experimental setup, where the oscillators are coupled
through a dissipative common medium S̃. Dissipation of the
032223-4
OSCILLATORY ACTIVITY REGULATION IN AN …
FIG. 7. Normalized area time series (A and Ai ) of the surround-
ing and N = 4 quasi-identical MBH oscillators showing (a) the
inactive state of the common medium (S̃) before coupling and (b) the
active state of the surrounding after coupling. (c) Unsynchronized
state of the oscillators before coupled through the common medium
and (d) synchronized activity of the coupled oscillators.
common medium causes the cessation of oscillations of the
coupled oscillators. In this experiment, the oscillations persist
for a finite time T (N ), which depends on the number of the
coupled oscillators N. The oscillation persistence time for a
single coupled oscillator [T (1)] is small (≈ 3–6 s). This is
regulated by our choice of a larger mercury volume (13 ml)
in the common medium, a relatively less mercury volume
(0.6 ml) in the oscillators, and a suitable molar concentration
of the electrolyte solution (a mixture of 0.5 M H2 SO4 and
6 mM K2 Cr2 O7 ).
Each oscillator interacts with the environment with equal
coupling strength (strong coupling with RC < 20 ). In these
experiments, we worked with N between one and six oscilla-
tors. Analogous to the previous section, we analyze all the
experimental results considering the mechanical activity of
the MBH oscillators.
Results
For this dynamic coupling scenario, we find that the cou-
pled oscillators oscillate in synchrony with each other, and
the common medium starts to oscillate with the oscillators.
Figure 7 shows the dynamical states (mechanical oscillations)
of the common medium and of the four oscillators before and
after coupling. Before coupling, no oscillations are in the com-
mon medium [Fig. 7(a)], and it starts oscillating [Fig. 7(b)]
after the oscillators are coupled through it. The unsynchro-
nized states of the oscillators are shown in Fig. 7(c) before
coupling, and after coupling they all oscillate in synchrony
[Fig. 7(d)]. The oscillations persist for some time T (N ). Even-
tually, the dissipation due to the common medium invokes
the cessation of synchronized oscillations of the coupled
oscillators.
As noted above T (1) ≈ 3–6 s. The most interesting ob-
servation is that the oscillations persistence time was found
to increase exponentially with the system size (N ). In Fig. 8
the semilog plot shows ln T (N ) increases linearly with N.
The exponent of growth law is β = 0.90 ± 0.02. We note that
T (5) ≈ 60–70 s, and T (6) ≈ 240 s. Extrapolating these, the
expected value of T (7) for N = 7 ≈ 885 s, which is so large,
that given experimental limitations it could not be accessed.
The time of T (6) ≈ 240 s corresponds to ∼2400 cycles of
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PHYSICAL REVIEW E 99, 032223 (2019)
FIG. 8. Semilogarithmic plot between T vs N, whre T represents
the oscillation persistence time of the coupled oscillators and N
is the oscillator number. The exponent β of the linear fit of the
plot is 0.90 ± 0.02. The error bars are from the five independent
experimental trials.
oscillations, given that the mechanical oscillations frequency
of the normalized area time series is ∼10 Hz.
In previous studies [15,18,22], density-dependent phenom-
ena have been reported such that the amplitude of the collec-
tive dynamics increased with the population density. In our
experiments, instead of the amplitude, the persistence time
of oscillations of the coupled oscillators increases with the
population size.
IV. SUMMARY
In the present work, we report regulation of the collective
oscillatory state. We present results for mercury beating heart
(MBH) oscillators coupled through surroundings (i.e., indirect
coupling) for both the static and dynamic coupling schemes.
All the experimental results were characterized via visualiza-
tion of the mechanical activities of the MBH oscillators. For
the experiments employing static coupling, population size
is increased up to N = 10 MBH oscillators. It was observed
that a subset of the total population underwent a transition
from active to inactive state and or vice versa. These partial
transitions are found to be asymptotically stable. Our obser-
vations are interesting because cessation and generation of
oscillations due to a change in population to our knowledge
have remained unexplored. In the dynamic coupling case, we
have shown that the oscillation persistence time of the coupled
oscillators (up to N = 6) increased steeply (exponentially).
Depending on the population of the oscillators and dissipa-
tive nature of the common medium, the exponential growth
of oscillation persistence time (T ) is indeed an interesting
observation. The experimental parameters of the system such
as the concentrations of the electrolyte solution, the volume
of the mercury drops, and the position of the iron nails are
all important factors to observe the phenomena described
in both Sec. II and Sec. III. Despite all the experimental
complications, such as chemical drift and intrinsic noise, the
BISWAS, KUMAR, DAS, AND PARMANANDA
experimental findings reported here are fairly reproducible
and robust. To summarize, we have shown that depending
on the population size of the system, the dynamical state
of the system changes from an oscillatory to nonoscillatory
state or vice versa, and the oscillation persistence time of
the systemic dynamical state increases with the population
size.
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PHYSICAL REVIEW E 99, 032223 (2019)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors acknowledge financial support from
IIT Bombay and DST India (project reference no.
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Nonlinear Dynamics Laboratory group for constructive
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