Synchrony by Birth and Death

Abstract

A population of oscillators typically synchronizes because coupling pulls their phases together. Here we consider malthusian oscillators whose coupling is demographic: oscillators are born and die at rates determined by their phases, generating an effective coupling without any phase velocity interaction. We find this coupling can synchronize a population, select a collective frequency, and produce a nongeneric fourth-root onset of coherence. These collective dynamics admit an exact reduction: a population with $m$ frequency classes reduces to $3m$ ordinary differential equations. This is the malthusian analogue of the Ott--Antonsen reduction for Kuramoto oscillators.