Synchronization transitions in ensembles of noisy oscillators with bi-harmonic coupling

Abstract: We describe synchronization transitions in an ensemble of globally coupled phase oscillators with a bi-harmonic coupling function, and two sources of disorder - diversity of intrinsic oscillatory frequencies and external independent noise. Based on the self-consistent formulation, we derive analytic solutions for different synchronous states. We report on various non-trivial transitions from incoherence to synchrony where possible scenarios include: simple supercritical transition (similar to classical Kuramoto model), subcritical transition with large area of bistability of incoherent and synchronous solutions, and also appearance of symmetric two-cluster solution which can coexist with regular synchronous state. Remarkably, we show that the interplay between relatively small white noise and finite-size fluctuations can lead to metastable asynchronous solution.