Synchronized clusters in coupled map networks: Self-organized and driven phase synchronization

Abstract

We study the synchronization of coupled maps on a variety of networks including regular one and two dimensional networks, scale free networks, small world networks, tree networks, and random networks. For small coupling strengths nodes show turbulent behavior but form phase synchronized clusters as coupling increases. We identify two different ways of cluster formation, self-organized clusters which have mostly intra-cluster couplings and driven clusters which have mostly inter-cluster couplings. The synchronized clusters may be of dominant self-organized type, dominant driven type or mixed type depending on the type of network and the parameters of the dynamics. There are some nodes of the floating type that show intermittent behaviour between getting attached to some clusters and evolving independently. The residence times of a floating node in a synchronized cluster show an exponential distribution. We define different states of the coupled dynamics by considering the number and type of synchronized clusters. For the local dynamics governed by the logistic map we study the phase diagram in the plane of the coupling constant ($ε$) and the logistic map parameter ($μ$). For large coupling strengths and nonlinear coupling we find that the scale free networks and the Caley tree networks lead to better cluster formation than the other types of networks with the same average connectivity. For most of our study we use the number of connections of the order of the number of nodes which allows us to distinguish between the two mechanisms of cluster formation. As the number of connections increases the number of nodes forming clusters and the size of the clusters in general increase.