Marginal chimera state at cross-frequency locking of pulse-coupled neural networks

Abstract: We consider two coupled populations of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons. Depending on the coupling strength, mean fields generated by these populations can have incommensurate frequencies, or become frequency locked. In the observed 2:1 locking state of the mean fields, individual neurons in one population are asynchronous with the mean fields, while in another populations they have the same frequency as the mean field. These synchronous neurons form a chimera state, where part of them build a fully synchronized cluster, while other remain scattered. We explain this chimera as a marginal one, caused by a self-organized neutral dynamics of the effective circle map.