PATTERN OF SYNCHRONY IN INHOMOGENEOUS NETWORKS OF OSCILLATORS WITH PULSE INTERACTIONS

Systems of globally coupled oscillators often display states of full s ynchrony in which all oscillators are phase locked. It is shown that f or globally coupled oscillators with neuronlike pulse interactions, th e phase-locked state is unstable to inhomogeneity in the local frequen cy. For weak inhomogeneity the system breaks into two subpopulations: one that is phase locked and another one that consists of aperiodic os cillators. The fraction of the unlocked population remains finite in t he limit of vanishing inhomogeneity.