OSCILLATORS (Coupled)
| Collection | International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics |
|---|---|
| Year | 2004 |
| Vol. (num.) | 2(2) |
| ID | ◀ 2441 ▶ |
| Object type | Methodology or model |
Oscillators that influence one another and become synchronized.
This intriguing property was discovered by Chr. HUYGHENS in l665.
S.H. STROGATZ and I. STEWART state: “Coupled oscillators can be found throughout the natural world, but they are especially conspicuous in living things: pacemaker cells in the heart, insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas; and neural networks in the brain and spinal cord that control such rhythmic behaviors as breathing, running and chewing. Indeed, not all the oscillators need be confined in the same organism: consider crikets that chirp in unison and congregations of synchronously flashing fireflies” (1993, p.68).
A mathematical theory of coupled oscillators has been developed and new angles have appeared recently through the chaos theory. The subject is obviously related to the composition of oscillations of different periods, but the way through which the significant “information” passes from one system to another is still in many cases not clearly understood.
Coupled oscillators must also have some relation with HAKEN's slaving principle and are an obvious necessity in organized systems and even in more or less synchronized quasi-systems, as for instance fish swarms (see D. RITZ, 1991).