There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

1980 Preface * 1999 Preface * 1999 Acknowledgements * Introduction * 1 Circular Logic * 2 Phase Singularities (Screwy Results of Circular Logic) * 3 The Rules of the Ring * 4 Ring Populations * 5 Getting Off the Ring * 6 Attracting Cycles and Isochrons * 7 Measuring the Trajectories of a Circadian Clock * 8 Populations of Attractor Cycle Oscillators * 9 Excitable Kinetics and Excitable Media * 10 The Varieties of Phaseless Experience: In Which the Geometrical Orderliness of Rhythmic Organization Breaks Down in Diverse Ways * 11 The Firefly Machine 12 Energy Metabolism in Cells * 13 The Malonic Acid Reagent ('Sodium Geometrate') * 14 Electrical Rhythmicity and Excitability in Cell Membranes * 15 The Aggregation of Slime Mold Amoebae * 16 Numerical Organizing Centers * 17 Electrical Singular Filaments in the Heart Wall * 18 Pattern Formation in the Fungi * 19 Circadian Rhythms in General * 20 The Circadian Clocks of Insect Eclosion * 21 The Flower of Kalanchoe * 22 The Cell Mitotic Cycle * 23 The Female Cycle * References * Index of Names * Index of Subjects

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/596B270197FE27DE5FABB598B6210622/S0025557200150892a.pdf/div-class-title-span-class-italic-the-geometry-of-biological-time-span-by-a-t-winfree-pp-544-dm68-corrected-second-printing-1990-isbn-3-540-52528-9-springer-div.pdf

The geometry of biological time , by A. T. Winfree. Pp 544. DM68. Corrected Second Printing 1990. ISBN 3-540-52528-9 (Springer)

Chimera states describing the stable coexistence of synchronous and incoherent dynamics have so far only been realized numerically. An experimental demonstration of these states in a network of discrete chemical oscillators reveals behaviour that differs from that predicted by existing phase-oscillator models.

/pdf/chimera-and-phase-cluster-states-in-populations-of-coupled-3brugtps2s.pdf

Chimera and phase-cluster states in populations of coupled chemical oscillators

A chimera state is a spatio-temporal pattern in a network of identical coupled oscillators in which synchronous and asynchronous oscillation coexist. This state of broken symmetry, which usually coexists with a stable spatially symmetric state, has intrigued the nonlinear dynamics community since its discovery in the early 2000s. Recent experiments have led to increasing interest in the origin and dynamics of these states. Here we review the history of research on chimera states and highlight major advances in understanding their behaviour.

http://dmabrams.esam.northwestern.edu/pubs/Panaggio%20and%20Abrams%20-%20Chimera%20states%20(review)%20-%20Nonlinearity%2028,%20R67-R87%20(2015).pdf

Chimera states: Coexistence of coherence and incoherence in networks of coupled oscillators

The synchronization of coupled oscillators is a fascinating manifestation of self-organization that nature uses to orchestrate essential processes of life, such as the beating of the heart. Although it was long thought that synchrony and disorder were mutually exclusive steady states for a network of identical oscillators, numerous theoretical studies in recent years have revealed the intriguing possibility of “chimera states,” in which the symmetry of the oscillator population is broken into a synchronous part and an asynchronous part. However, a striking lack of empirical evidence raises the question of whether chimeras are indeed characteristic of natural systems. This calls for a palpable realization of chimera states without any fine-tuning, from which physical mechanisms underlying their emergence can be uncovered. Here, we devise a simple experiment with mechanical oscillators coupled in a hierarchical network to show that chimeras emerge naturally from a competition between two antagonistic synchronization patterns. We identify a wide spectrum of complex states, encompassing and extending the set of previously described chimeras. Our mathematical model shows that the self-organization observed in our experiments is controlled by elementary dynamical equations from mechanics that are ubiquitous in many natural and technological systems. The symmetry-breaking mechanism revealed by our experiments may thus be prevalent in systems exhibiting collective behavior, such as power grids, optomechanical crystals, or cells communicating via quorum sensing in microbial populations.

/pdf/chimera-states-in-mechanical-oscillator-networks-1mp566ueeb.pdf

Chimera states in mechanical oscillator networks

Systems of nonlocally coupled oscillators can exhibit complex spatio-temporal patterns, called chimera states, which consist of coexisting domains of spatially coherent (synchronized) and incoherent dynamics. We report on a novel form of these states, found in a widely used model of a limit-cycle oscillator if one goes beyond the limit of weak coupling typical for phase oscillators. Then patches of synchronized dynamics appear within the incoherent domain giving rise to a multichimera state. We find that, depending on the coupling strength and range, different multi-chimeras arise in a transition from classical chimera states. The additional spatial modulation is due to strong coupling interaction and thus cannot be observed in simple phase-oscillator models.

When nonlocal coupling between oscillators becomes stronger: patched synchrony or multichimera states.

Spatiotemporal chaos and turbulence are universal concepts for the explanation of irregular behavior in various physical systems. Recently, a remarkable new phenomenon, called "chimera states," has been described, where in a spatially homogeneous system, regions of irregular incoherent motion coexist with regular synchronized motion, forming a self-organized pattern in a population of nonlocally coupled oscillators. Whereas most previous studies of chimera states focused their attention on the case of large numbers of oscillators employing the thermodynamic limit of infinitely many oscillators, here we investigate the properties of chimera states in populations of finite size using concepts from deterministic chaos. Our calculations of the Lyapunov spectrum show that the incoherent motion, which is described in the thermodynamic limit as a stationary behavior, in finite size systems appears as weak spatially extensive chaos. Moreover, for sufficiently small populations the chimera states reveal their transient nature: after a certain time span we observe a sudden collapse of the chimera pattern and a transition to the completely coherent state. Our results indicate that chimera states can be considered as chaotic transients, showing the same properties as type-II supertransients in coupled map lattices.

Chimera states are chaotic transients

Chimera states are remarkable spatiotemporal patterns in which coherence coexists with incoherence. As yet, chimera states have been considered as nongeneric, since they emerge only for particular initial conditions. In contrast, we show here that in a network of globally coupled oscillators delayed feedback stimulation with realistic (i.e., spatially decaying) stimulation profile generically induces chimera states. Intriguingly, a bifurcation analysis reveals that these chimera states are the natural link between the coherent and the incoherent states.

/pdf/chimera-states-the-natural-link-between-coherence-and-3d7kbb23fu.pdf

Chimera States: The Natural Link Between Coherence and Incoherence

Chimera states are particular trajectories in systems of phase oscillators with nonlocal coupling that display a spatiotemporal pattern of coherent and incoherent motion We present here a detailed analysis of the spectral properties for such trajectories First, we study numerically their Lyapunov spectrum and its behavior for an increasing number of oscillators The spectra demonstrate the hyperchaotic nature of the chimera states and show a correspondence of the Lyapunov dimension with the number of incoherent oscillators Then, we pass to the thermodynamic limit equation and present an analytic approach to the spectrum of a corresponding linearized evolution operator We show that, in this setting, the chimera state is neutrally stable and that the continuous spectrum coincides with the limit of the hyperchaotic Lyapunov spectrum obtained for the finite size systems

Spectral properties of chimera states.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6544/aaaa07/pdf

Oleh E. Omel’chenko

Papers

When nonlocal coupling between oscillators becomes stronger: patched synchrony or multichimera states.

Chimera states are chaotic transients

Chimera States: The Natural Link Between Coherence and Incoherence

Spectral properties of chimera states.

The mathematics behind chimera states