Bifurcations in the Kuramoto model with external forcing and higher-order interactions.

Abstract

Synchronization is an important phenomenon in a wide variety of systems comprising interacting oscillatory units, whether natural (like neurons, biochemical reactions, and cardiac cells) or artificial (like metronomes, power grids, and Josephson junctions). The Kuramoto model provides a simple description of these systems and has been useful in their mathematical exploration. Here, we investigate this model by combining two common features that have been observed in many systems: External periodic forcing and higher-order interactions among the elements. We show that the combination of these ingredients leads to a very rich bifurcation scenario that produces 11 different asymptotic states of the system, with competition between forced and spontaneous synchronization. We found, in particular, that saddle-node, Hopf, and homoclinic manifolds are duplicated in regions of parameter space where the unforced system displays bi-stability.