Isochronous dynamics in pulse coupled oscillator networks with delay

Abstract

We consider a network of identical pulse-coupled oscillators with delay and all-to-all coupling. We demonstrate that the discontinuous nature of the dynamics induces the appearance of isochronous regions—subsets of the phase space filled with periodic orbits having the same period. For fixed values of the network parameters each such isochronous region corresponds to a subset of initial states on an appropriate surface of section with non-zero dimension such that all periodic orbits in this set have qualitatively similar dynamical behaviour. We analytically and numerically study in detail such an isochronous region, give a proof of its existence, and describe its properties. We further describe other isochronous regions that appear in the system.