Physics Colloquium - Spring 2007 - The Universality of Synchrony: Critical Behavior in a Discrete Model of Stochastic Phase Coupled Oscillators
Dept of Physics & Astronomy
University of Maine, Orono, Maine
Presents
Professor Katja Lindenberg
Dept. of Chemistry
University of California, San Diego
The Universality of Synchrony: Critical Behavior in a Discrete Model of Stochastic Phase Coupled Oscillators
Synchronization of stochastic phase-coupled oscillators is known to occur in diverse systems (from fireflies to heart muscle cells), but are notoriously elusive to characterize because sufficiently complete analytic work is not yet within our reach, and thorough numerical description usually defies all resources. We present the simplest discrete model to date that leads to synchronization and that is sufficiently simple to be characterized in meaningful detail. Not only are we able to fully characterize this nonequilibrium phase transition, including the determination of critical exponents and upper and lower critical dimensions, but we find that this phase transition falls in one of the equilibrium phase transition universality classes. Finally, we assess the effects of spatial disorder on this synchronization transition.
K. Wood, C. Van den Broeck, R. Kawai, and K. Lindenberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. Vol. 96, 145701 (2006).
K. Wood, C. Van den Broeck, R. Kawai, and K. Lindenberg, Phys. Rev. E Vol. 74, 031113 (2006).
Effects of Disorder on Synchronization of Discrete Phase-Coupled Oscillators, K. Wood, C. Van den Broeck, R. Kawai, and K. Lindenberg, submitted for publication.
Friday, April 27, 2007
3:10 pm
140 Bennett Hall
Refreshments will follow in Rm. 114, Bennett Hall
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