Towards a general theory for coupling functions allowing persistent synchronization

Abstract: We study synchronisation properties of networks of coupled dynamical systems with interaction akin to diffusion. We assume that the isolated node dynamics possesses a forward invariant set on which it has a bounded Jacobian, then we characterise a class of coupling functions that allows for uniformly stable synchronisation in connected complex networks --- in the sense that there is an open neighbourhood of the initial conditions that is uniformly attracted towards synchronisation. Moreover, this stable synchronisation persists under perturbations to non-identical node dynamics. We illustrate the theory with numerical examples and conclude with a discussion on embedding these results in a more general framework of spectral dichotomies.