Sufficiently dense Kuramoto networks are globally synchronizing

Abstract

Consider any network of $n$ identical Kuramoto oscillators in which each oscillator is coupled bidirectionally with unit strength to at least $\mu (n-1)$ other oscillators. There is a critical value of the connectivity, $\mu_c$, such that whenever $\mu>\mu_c$, the system is guaranteed to converge to the all-in-phase synchronous state for almost all initial conditions, but when $\mu<\mu_c$, there are networks with other stable states. The precise value of the critical connectivity remains unknown, but it has been conjectured to be $\mu_c=0.75$. In 2020, Lu and Steinerberger proved that $\mu_c\leq 0.7889$, and Yoneda, Tatsukawa, and Teramae proved in 2021 that $\mu_c > 0.6838$. In this paper, we prove that $\mu_c\leq 0.75$ and explain why this is the best upper bound that one can obtain by a purely linear stability analysis.