Critical transition influenced by dynamic quorum sensing in nonlinear oscillators

Abstract

We investigate the critical transitions in the ensemble of nonlinear oscillators interacting with the dynamical environment based on a threshold. The threshold is encoded by the amplitude of individual oscillators present in the network. The key idea is that whenever the oscillator’s amplitude is above the threshold, that node will be coupled to the environment with particular interaction strength. This consideration mimics the mechanism of quorum sensing by which many biological and chemical systems attain collective behavior when the population density reaches the threshold. We found the emergence of first-order discontinuous transition to steady states when the threshold is less than the maximum amplitude. We also deduced the general expression to obtain critical points in the chosen models.