Prediction of partial synchronization in delay-coupled nonlinear oscillators, with application to Hindmarsh–Rose neurons

The full synchronization of coupled nonlinear oscillators has been widely studied. In this paper we investigate conditions for which partial synchronization of time-delayed diffusively coupled systems arises. The coupling configuration of the systems is described by a directed graph. As a novel quantitative result we first give necessary and sufficient conditions for the presence of forward invariant sets characterized by partially synchronous motion. These conditions can easily be checked from the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian. Second, we perform stability analysis of the synchronized equilibria in a (gain,delay) parameter space. For this analysis the coupled nonlinear systems are linearized around the synchronized equilibria and then the resulting characteristic function is factorized. By such a factorization, it is shown that the relation between the behaviour of different agents at the zero of the characteristic function depends on the structure of the eigenvectors of the weighted Laplacian matrix. By determining the structure of the solutions in the unstable manifold, combined with the characterization of invariant sets, we predict which partially synchronous regimes occur and estimate the corresponding coupling gain and delay values. We apply the obtained results to networks of coupled Hindmarsh–Rose neurons and verify the occurrence of the expected partially synchronous regimes by using a numerical simulation. We also make a comparison with an existing approach based on Lyapunov functionals.