Shamik Gupta - Université de Paris-Sud #
Synchronization in coupled oscillator systems in presence of inertia and 
noise #
The Kuramoto model of coupled oscillators serves as a prototype to study 
spontaneous synchronization in biological and physical systems. The 
model involves overdamped motion of globally coupled oscillators of 
distributed natural frequencies. We study the model by including 
inertial terms and thermal noise in the dynamics. For unimodal frequency 
distributions, we show that
the system exhibits a nonequilibrium first-order transition from a 
synchronized phase at low parameter values to an unsynchronized phase at 
high values. By interpreting the model as a system of particles 
interacting through long-range interaction and driven out of equilibrium 
by quenched external forces, we suggest how one may adopt a statistical 
physics perspective to study the dynamics.