Asymptotic description of transients and synchronized states of globally coupled oscillators

Abstract A two-timescale asymptotic method has been introduced to analyze the multimodal mean-field Kuramoto model of oscillator synchronization in the high-frequency limit. The method allows to uncouple the probability density in different components corresponding to the different peaks of the oscillator frequency distribution. Each component evolves towards a stationary state in a comoving frame and the overall order parameter can be reconstructed by combining them. Synchronized phases are a combination of traveling waves and incoherent solutions depending on parameter values. Our results agree very well with direct numerical simulations of the nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation for the probability density. Numerical results have been obtained by finite differences and a spectral method in the particular case of bimodal (symmetric and asymmetric) frequency distribution with or without external field. We also recover in a very easy and intuitive way the only other known analytical results: those corresponding to reflection-symmetric bimodal frequency distributions near bifurcation points.