Chimera states in nonlocally coupled bicomponent phase oscillators: From synchronous to asynchronous chimeras

Abstract

Chimera states, a symmetry-breaking spatiotemporal pattern in nonlocally coupled identical dynamical units, prevail in a variety of systems. Here, we consider a population of nonlocally coupled bicomponent phase oscillators in which oscillators with natural frequency $ω_0$ (positive oscillators) and $-ω_0$ (negative oscillators) are randomly distributed along a ring. We show the existence of chimera states no matter how large $ω_0$ is and the states manifest themselves in the form that oscillators with positive/negative frequency support their own chimera states. There are two types of chimera states, synchronous chimera states at small $ω_0$ in which coherent positive and negative oscillators share a same mean phase velocity and asynchronous chimera states at large $ω_0$ in which coherent positive and negative oscillators have different mean phase velocities. Increasing $ω_0$ induces a desynchronization transition between synchronous chimera states and asynchronous chimera states.