Synchronization in cilia carpets and the Kuramoto model with local coupling: breakup of global synchronization in the presence of noise

Abstract

Carpets of beating cilia represent a paradigmatic example of self-organized synchronization of noisy biological oscillators, characterized by traveling waves of cilia phase. We present a multi-scale model of a cilia carpet, which comprises realistic hydrodynamic interactions between cilia computed for a chiral cilia beat pattern from unicellular Paramecium and active noise of the cilia beat. We demonstrate an abrupt loss of global synchronization beyond a characteristic noise strength. We characterize stochastic transitions between synchronized and disordered dynamics, which generalizes the notion of phase slips in pairs of coupled noisy phase oscillators. Our theoretical work establishes a link between the two-dimensional Kuramoto model of phase oscillators with mirror-symmetric oscillator coupling and detailed models of biological oscillators with asymmetric, chiral interactions.