Chimera states in ensembles of excitable FitzHugh-Nagumo systems

Abstract: An ensemble of nonlocally coupled excitable FitzHugh-Nagumo systems is studied. In the presence of noise the explored system can exhibit a special kind of chimera states called coherence-resonance chimera. As previously thought, noise plays principal role in forming these structures. It is shown in the present paper that these regimes appear because of the specific coupling between the elements. The action of coupling involve a spatial wave regime, which occurs in ensemble of excitable nodes even if the noise is switched off. In addition, a new chimera state is obtained in an excitable regime. It is shown that the noise makes this chimera more stable near an Andronov-Hopf bifurcation.