From incoherence to synchronicity in the network Kuramoto model.

We study the synchronization properties of the Kuramoto model of coupled phase oscillators on a general network. Here we distinguish the ability of such a system to self-synchronize from the stability of this behavior. While self-synchronization is a consequence of genuine nonperturbative dynamics, the stability in dynamical systems is usually accessible by fluctuations about a fixed point, here taken to be the phase synchronized solution. We examine this problem in terms of modes of the graph Laplacian, by which the absolute Lyapunov stability of the phase synchronized fixed point is readily demonstrated. Departures from stability are seen to arise at the next order in fluctuations where, depending on a truncation in the number of time-dependent Laplacian modes, the dynamical equations can be reduced to forms resembling those for species population models, the logistic and the Lotka-Volterra equations. Methods from these systems are exploited to analytically derive new critical couplings signaling deviation from classical stability. We thereby analytically explain the existence of an intermediate regime of behavior between incoherence and synchronization, where system wide periodic behaviors are exhibited and stable, unstable, and hyperbolic fixed points can be identified. We discuss these results in light of numerical solutions of the equations of motion for various networks.