Synchronization of active mechanical oscillators by an inertial load

Abstract

Motivated by the operation of myogenic (self-oscillatory) insect flight muscle, we study a model consisting of a large number of identical oscillatory contractile elements joined in a chain, whose end is attached to a damped mass-spring oscillator. When the inertial load is small, the serial coupling favors an antisynchronous state in which the extension of one oscillator is compensated by the contraction of another, in order to preserve the total length. However, a sufficiently massive load can sychronize the oscillators and can even induce oscillation in situations where isolated elements would be stable. The system has a complex phase diagram displaying quiescent, synchronous and antisynchrononous phases, as well as an unsual asynchronous phase in which the total length of the chain oscillates at a different frequency from the individual active elements.

5 pages, 4 figures, To appear in Phys. Rev. Lett

References in corpus (2)

• Spontaneous Oscillations of Collective Molecular Motors
• Force-Velocity Relations of a Two-State Crossbridge Model for Molecular Motors

Cited by in corpus (8)

• From quasiperiodic partial synchronization to collective chaos in populations of inhibitory neurons with delay
• Physics of muscle contraction
• Dynamics of a large system of spiking neurons with synaptic delay
• Spontaneous waves in muscle fibres
• Oscillations in molecular motor assemblies
• The self-oscillation paradox in the flight motor of D. melanogaster
• A microscopic mechanism for self-organized quasi periodicity in random networks of non linear oscillators
• Effect of periodic parametric excitation on an ensemble of force-coupled self-oscillators