Stability of entrainment of a continuum of coupled oscillators

Abstract

We examine the design of the entrainment process for an uncountably infinite collection of coupled phase oscillators that are all subject to the same periodic driving signal. In the absence of coupling, an appropriately designed input can result in each oscillator attaining the frequency of the driving signal, with a phase offset determined by its natural frequency. We consider a special case of interacting oscillators in which the coupling tends to destabilize the phase configuration to which the driving signal would send the collection in the absence of coupling. In this setting we derive stability results that characterize the trade-off between the effects of driving and coupling, and compare these results to the well-known Kuramoto model of a collection of free-running coupled oscillators.