Athermal dynamics of strongly coupled stochastic three-state oscillators.

We study the behavior of globally coupled ensembles of cyclic stochastic three-state units with transition rates from i-1 to i proportional to the number of units in state i. Contrary to mean-field theory predictions, numerical simulations show significant stochastic oscillations for sufficiently large coupling strength. The order parameter characterizing units synchrony increases monotonically with coupling while the coherence of oscillations has a maximum at a certain coupling strength. We find the exact formulas for the stationary probability distribution and the order parameter.