SELF-ENTRAINMENT OF A P O P U L A T I O N OF

COUPLED N O N - L I N E A R OSCILLATORS
Yoshiki Kuramoto
Department of Physics, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

Temporal organization of matter is a w i d e s p r e a d phenomenon over a

macroscopic world in far from thermodynamic equilibrium. A previous
study on chemical instability I) implies that a simplest nontrivial
model for a temporally organized system may be r e p r e s e n t e d by a macro-
scopic self-sustained oscillator Q obeying the equation of m o t i o n

= (ira + ~)Q - BIQ]2Q ,

(13
~,B > O.

Consider a population of such oscillators QI' Q 2 " " Q N with various

frequencies, and introduce interactions between every pair as follows.

~s = (ims + ~)Qs + Z VrsQ r - 81Qs]2Qs ,

r~s (2)
r,s = i, 2,.-.N .

We found that it is possible to construct from (2) a soluble model for

a community exhibiting mutual synchronization or s e l f - e n t r a i n m e n t
above a certain threshold value of the coupling strength. Such a type
of phase transition has been considered by Winfree 2) without resorting
to specialized models but only p h e n o m e n o l o g i c a l l y .
Our simplifying assumptions are:
(1) Vrs = v/N i n d e p e n d e n t l y of r and s,
(II) a,~+~ but ~/fl, m s , v = finite,
(hi) N~
i? s
Let us put Qs=Ps e Owing to the a s s u m p t i o n (II), the amplitude
Ps may be fixed at /~7~. Thus we have only to consider the e q u a t i o n
= v
~s mS + N Z s i n ( ~ r - ~ s ) (3)
r
As an illustration, we summarize the results obtained when the
distribution of the native frequency is a Lorentzian with the peak at
m 0 and the w i d t h ~. In this case the threshold condition is

n ~ 21x/vl = 1 (43

For n<l the asymptotic behavior of 9s(t) as t+~ has two p o s s i b i l i t i e s

depending on the value of its native frequency m s . Thus we classify
the oscillators into two groups :
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U S
(A) I UOl' < z .
vv~ - n
The oscillators satisfying this condition are m u t u a l l y synchro-
nized and one finds

9s~t) : ~s t + ~s + ~ ' ' (s)

~s = u0 ' (6)
where ~s is a s i n g l e - v a l u e d function of u s and ~' is an a r b i t r a r y
constant but should be the same for all s belonging to this group.

us - w0
(B) I - - I> 1
v/T - n
The oscillators of this group fail to synchronize, but their fre-
quencies are shifted. We find

s(t) : ~s t + f s ( t ) ' (7)

where
-- / V2(1 - n)
u s : u 0 + (u s - u 0 ) -
(Us ~o)Z (8)
and

fs(t) = fsCt + ~ s (9)

If we define an order p a r a m e t e r ~ by the number of the os-
cillators belonging to (A) divided by N, then we find

f ~2- T a n -I 2 ~Zl - ~ ( ~7<i )

: [ n (10)
0 ( n>l )
Finally the stationary distribution of the effective frequency u may
be e x p r e s s e d as

f(~) = a6(~ - ~o )
+ ~ 15 - m 0 1 / [ { ( ~ - m0)2+y2+v2x}~( ~ - u0)2+v2x] (Ii)

where
1 ~ ( n<l )
X = 0 ( n > l ).
An i n f i n i t e l y s h a r p peak at ~=u 0 c o r r e s p o n d s to a m a c r o s c o p i c os-
cillation. The b a c k g r o u n drepresents the c o n t r i b u t i o n from the os-
cillators which have failed to synchronize with the main oscillation.
The intensity of the b a c k g r o u n d near the center has been reduced
drastically due to the factor I~-uOl. It is very interesting to notice
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3)
that our spectrum resembles that of the ~-rhythm of human brain wave.

References
I] Y. Kuramoto and T. Tsuzuki, Prog. Theor. Phys. 52 (1974), 1399.
2] A.T. Winfree, J. Theor. Biol. 16 (1967), 15.
3] N. Wiener, "Cybernetics" MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1948.