Intermittent chaotic chimeras for coupled rotators

Abstract

Two symmetrically coupled populations of N oscillators with inertia $m$ display chaotic solutions with broken symmetry similar to experimental observations with mechanical pendula. In particular, we report the first evidence of intermittent chaotic chimeras, where one population is synchronized and the other jumps erratically between laminar and turbulent phases. These states have finite life-times diverging as a power-law with N and m. Lyapunov analyses reveal chaotic properties in quantitative agreement with theoretical predictions for globally coupled dissipative systems.