Collective Dynamics of coupled Lorenz oscillators near the Hopf Boundary: Intermittency and Chimera states

Abstract: We study collective dynamics of networks of mutually coupled identical Lorenz oscillators near subcritical Hopf bifurcation. This system shows induced multistable behavior with interesting spatio-temporal dynamics including synchronization, desynchronization and chimera states. We find this network may exhibit intermittent behavior due to the complex basin structures, where, temporal dynamics of the oscillators in the ensemble switches between different attractors. Consequently, different oscillators may show dynamics that is intermittently synchronized (or desynchronized), giving rise to {\it intermittent chimera states}. The behaviour of the intermittent laminar phases is characterized by the characteristic time spend in the synchronization manifold, which decays as power law. This intermittent dynamics is quite general and can be extended for large number of oscillators interacting with nonlocal, global and local coupling schemes.