Stationary states and bifurcations in a one-dimensional active medium of oscillators

This article presents the results of an analytical and computer study of the collective dynamic properties of a chain of self-oscillating systems (conditionally — oscillators). It is assumed that the couplings of individual elements of the chain are non-reciprocal, unidirectional. More precisely, it is assumed that each element of the chain is under the influence of the previous one, while the reverse reaction is absent (physically insignificant). This is the main feature of the chain. This system can be interpreted as an active discrete medium with unidirectional transfer, in particular, the transfer of a matter. Such chains can represent mathematical models of real systems having a lattice structure that occur in various fields of natural science and technology: physics, chemistry, biology, radio engineering, economics, etc. They can also represent models of technological and computational processes. Nonlinear self-oscillating systems (conditionally, oscillators) with a wide “spectrum” of potentially possible individual self-oscillations, from periodic to chaotic, were chosen as the “elements” of the lattice. This allows one to explore various dynamic modes of the chain from regular to chaotic, changing the parameters of the elements and not changing the nature of the elements themselves. The joint application of qualitative methods of the theory of dynamical systems and qualitative-numerical methods allows one to obtain a clear picture of all possible dynamic regimes of the chain. The conditions for the existence and stability of spatially-homogeneous dynamic regimes (deterministic and chaotic) of the chain are studied. The analytical results are illustrated by a numerical experiment. The dynamical regimes of the chain are studied under perturbations of parameters at its boundary. The possibility of controlling the dynamic regimes of the chain by turning on the necessary perturbation at the boundary is shown. Various cases of the dynamics of chains comprised of inhomogeneous (different in their parameters) elements are considered. The global chaotic synchronization (of all oscillators in the chain) is studied analytically and numerically