Two Scenarios for the Onset and Suppression of Collective Oscillations in Heterogeneous Populations of Active Rotators

Abstract

We consider the macroscopic regimes and the scenarios for the onset and the suppression of collective oscillations in a heterogeneous population of active rotators, comprised of excitable or oscillatory elements. We analyze the system in the continuum limit within the framework of Ott-Antonsen reduction method, determining the states with a constant mean field and their stability boundaries in terms of the characteristics of the rotators' frequency distribution. The system is established to display three macroscopic regimes, namely the homogeneous stationary state, the oscillatory state and the heterogeneous stationary state, whereby the transitions between the characteristic domains involve a complex bifurcation structure, organized around three codimension-two bifurcation points: a Bogdanov-Takens point, a cusp point and a fold-homoclinic point. Apart from the monostable domains, our study also reveals two domains admitting bistable behavior, manifested as coexistence between the two stationary solutions, or between a stationary and a periodic solution. It is shown that the collective mode may emerge via two generic scenarios, guided by a SNIPER or the Hopf bifurcation, such that the transition from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous stationary state under increasing diversity may follow the classical paradigm, but may also be hysteretic. We demonstrate that the basic bifurcation structure holds qualitatively in presence of small noise or small coupling delay, with the boundaries of the characteristic domains shifted compared to the noiseless and delay-free case.