COEXISTENCE OF NUMEROUS SYNCHRONIZED AND DESYNCHRONIZED STATES IN A MODEL OF TWO PHASE OSCILLATORS COUPLED WITH DELAY

Abstract

When two phase oscillators interact with a time-delay, new synchronized and desynchronized regimes appear, in this way giving rise to the phenomenon of multistability. The number of coexisting stable states grows with an increase of the delay, and their frequencies quantize. We show that, while the number of synchronized solutions grows linearly with the delay and/or coupling, the set of the desynchronized solutions, i.e. those with different average frequencies of the individual oscillators, raises quadratically with increasing delay. For the synchronized states, we analyze the mutual arrangement of the basins of attraction, and conclude that the structure and size of the basins are apparently the same for each state. We discuss possible implications for desynchronizing brain stimulation techniques.