Explosive death induced by mean–field diffusion in identical oscillators

Abstract

We report the occurrence of an explosive death transition for the first time in an ensemble of identical limit cycle and chaotic oscillators coupled via mean–field diffusion. In both systems, the variation of the normalized amplitude with the coupling strength exhibits an abrupt and irreversible transition to death state from an oscillatory state and this first order phase transition to death state is independent of the size of the system. This transition is quite general and has been found in all the coupled systems where in–phase oscillations co–exist with a coupling dependent homogeneous steady state. The backward transition point for this phase transition has been calculated using linear stability analysis which is in complete agreement with the numerics.