Locking and regularisation of chimeras by periodic forcing

Abstract

We study how a chimera state in a one-dimensional medium of non-locally coupled oscillators responses to a periodic external force. On a macroscopic level, where chimera can be considered as an oscillating object, forcing leads to entrainment of the chimera's frequency inside an Arnold tongue. On a mesoscopic level, where chimera can be viewed as a inhomogeneous, stationary or nonstationary pattern, strong forcing can lead to reguralization of an unstationary chimera. On a microscopic level of the dynamics of individual oscillators, forcing outside of the Arnold tongue leads to a multi-plateu state with nontrivial locking properties.