- Open Access
Phase reduction analysis of traveling breathers in reaction-diffusion systems
Phys. Rev. Research 7, 043079 – Published 20 October, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/4nzq-9kr2
Abstract
We formulate a theory for phase reduction analysis of traveling breathers in reaction-diffusion systems with spatial translational symmetry. In this formulation, the spatial and temporal phases represent the position and oscillation of a traveling breather, respectively. We perform phase reduction analysis on a pair of FitzHugh-Nagumo models exhibiting standing breathers and a pair of Gray-Scott models exhibiting traveling breathers. The derived phase equations for the spatial and temporal phases indicate nontrivial spatiotemporal dynamics, where both phases are mutually coupled. Using the phase equations, we obtain the time evolution of the phase differences, which is consistent with that obtained from direct numerical simulations.
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Article Text
References (74)
- Y. Kuramoto, Chemical Oscillations, Waves, and Turbulence (Springer, New York, 1984).
- A. T. Winfree, The Geometry of Biological Time (Springer, New York, 1980).
- A. Pikovsky, M. Rosenblum, and J. Kurths, Synchronization: A Universal Concept in Nonlinear Sciences (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001).
- S. C. Manrubia, A. S. Mikhailov, and D. H. Zanette, Emergence of Dynamical Order: Synchronization Phenomena in Complex Systems (World Scientific, Singapore, 2004).
- G. V. Osipov, J. Kurths, and C. Zhou, Synchronization in Oscillatory Networks (Springer, New York, 2007).
- E. Brown, J. Moehlis, and P. Holmes, On the phase reduction and response dynamics of neural oscillator populations, Neural Comput. 16, 673 (2004).
- B. Ermentrout, Type I membranes, phase resetting curves, and synchrony, Neural Comput. 8, 979 (1996).
- H. Nakao, Phase reduction approach to synchronization of nonlinear oscillators, Contemp. Phys. 57, 188 (2016).
- B. Pietras and A. Daffertshofer, Network dynamics of coupled oscillators and phase reduction techniques, Phys. Rep. 819, 1 (2019).
- B. Ermentrout and D. H. Terman, Mathematical Foundations of Neuroscience (Springer, New York, 2010).
- F. C. Hoppensteadt and E. M. Izhikevich, Weakly Connected Neural Networks (Springer, New York, 1997).
- E. M. Izhikevich, Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience: The Geometry of Excitability and Bursting (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2007).
- J. A. Acebrón, L. L. Bonilla, C. J. Pérez Vicente, F. Ritort, and R. Spigler, The Kuramoto model: A simple paradigm for synchronization phenomena, Rev. Mod. Phys. 77, 137 (2005).
- A. Arenas, A. Díaz-Guilera, J. Kurths, Y. Moreno, and C. Zhou, Synchronization in complex networks, Phys. Rep. 469, 93 (2008).
- P. Ashwin, S. Coombes, and R. Nicks, Mathematical frameworks for oscillatory network dynamics in neuroscience, J. Math. Neurosci. 6, 2 (2016).
- A. Pikovsky and M. Rosenblum, Dynamics of globally coupled oscillators: Progress and perspectives, Chaos 25, 097616 (2015).
- T. Stankovski, T. Pereira, P. V. E. McClintock, and A. Stefanovska, Coupling functions: Universal insights into dynamical interaction mechanisms, Rev. Mod. Phys. 89, 045001 (2017).
- S. H. Strogatz, From Kuramoto to crawford: Exploring the onset of synchronization in populations of coupled oscillators, Physica D 143, 1 (2000).
- F. A. Rodrigues, T. K. DM. Peron, P. Ji, and J. Kurths, The Kuramoto model in complex networks, Phys. Rep. 610, 1 (2016).
- T. Arai, K. Ota, T. Funato, K. Tsuchiya, T. Aoyagi, and S. Aoi, Interlimb coordination is not strictly controlled during walking, Commun. Biol. 7, 1152 (2024).
- H. Furukawa, T. Arai, T. Funato, S. Aoi, and T. Aoyagi, Bayesian estimation of trunk-leg coordination during walking using phase oscillator models, Neurosci. Res. 215, 47 (2025).
- T. Funato, Y. Yamamoto, S. Aoi, T. Imai, T. Aoyagi, N. Tomita, and K. Tsuchiya, Evaluation of the phase-dependent rhythm control of human walking using phase response curves, PLoS Comput. Biol. 12, e1004950 (2016).
- M. Yoshikawa and I. Aihara, Wavy synchronization in locomotion of train millipedes, arXiv:2504.04173.
- T. Onojima, T. Goto, H. Mizuhara, and T. Aoyagi, A dynamical systems approach for estimating phase interactions between rhythms of different frequencies from experimental data, PLoS Comput. Biol. 14, e1005928 (2018).
- B. Kralemann, M. Frühwirth, A. Pikovsky, M. Rosenblum, T. Kenner, J. Schaefer, and M. Moser, In vivo cardiac phase response curve elucidates human respiratory heart rate variability, Nat. Commun. 4, 2418 (2013).
- K. Ota, I. Aihara, and T. Aoyagi, Interaction mechanisms quantified from dynamical features of frog choruses, R. Soc. Open Sci. 7, 191693 (2020).
- Y. Kawamura and H. Nakao, Collective phase description of oscillatory convection, Chaos 23, 043129 (2013).
- Y. Kawamura and H. Nakao, Noise-induced synchronization of oscillatory convection and its optimization, Phys. Rev. E 89, 012912 (2014).
- V. Godavarthi, Y. Kawamura, and K. Taira, Optimal waveform for fast synchronization of airfoil wakes, J. Fluid Mech. 976, R1 (2023).
- Y. Kawamura, V. Godavarthi, and K. Taira, Adjoint-based phase reduction analysis of incompressible periodic flows, Phys. Rev. Fluids 7, 104401 (2022).
- K. Taira and H. Nakao, Phase-response analysis of synchronization for periodic flows, J. Fluid Mech. 846, R2 (2018).
- M. Iima, Optimal external forces of the lock-in phenomena for flow past an inclined plate in uniform flow, Phys. Rev. E 109, 045102 (2024).
- M. Iima, Phase reduction technique on a target region, Phys. Rev. E 103, 053303 (2021).
- M. Iima, Jacobian-free algorithm to calculate the phase sensitivity function in the phase reduction theory and its applications to Kármán’s vortex street, Phys. Rev. E 99, 062203 (2019).
- Y. Kawamura and R. Tsubaki, Phase reduction approach to elastohydrodynamic synchronization of beating flagella, Phys. Rev. E 97, 022212 (2018).
- Y. Kawamura, H. Nakao, K. Arai, H. Kori, and Y. Kuramoto, Collective phase sensitivity, Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 024101 (2008).
- Y. Kawamura, H. Nakao, K. Arai, H. Kori, and Y. Kuramoto, Phase synchronization between collective rhythms of globally coupled oscillator groups: Noisy identical case, Chaos 20, 043109 (2010).
- Y. Kawamura, H. Nakao, and Y. Kuramoto, Collective phase description of globally coupled excitable elements, Phys. Rev. E 84, 046211 (2011).
- Y. Kawamura, Collective phase reduction of globally coupled noisy dynamical elements, Phys. Rev. E 95, 032225 (2017).
- J. Löber and H. Engel, Controlling the position of traveling waves in reaction–diffusion systems, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 148305 (2014).
- J. Löber, M. Bär, and H. Engel, Front propagation in one-dimensional spatially periodic bistable media, Phys. Rev. E 86, 066210 (2012).
- V. N. Biktashev, D. Barkley, and I. V. Biktasheva, Orbital motion of spiral waves in excitable media, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 058302 (2010).
- B. Sandstede, A. Scheel, and C. Wulff, Dynamics of spiral waves on unbounded domains using center-manifold reductions, J. Diff. Equ. 141, 122 (1997).
- H. Nakao, T. Yanagita, and Y. Kawamura, Phase-reduction approach to synchronization of spatiotemporal rhythms in reaction–diffusion systems, Phys. Rev. X 4, 021032 (2014).
- Y. Kawamura, S. Shirasaka, T. Yanagita, and H. Nakao, Optimizing mutual synchronization of rhythmic spatiotemporal patterns in reaction–diffusion systems, Phys. Rev. E 96, 012224 (2017).
- M. Hildebrand, J. Cui, E. Mihaliuk, J. Wang, and K. Showalter, Synchronization of spatiotemporal patterns in locally coupled excitable media, Phys. Rev. E 68, 026205 (2003).
- P. Khan and S. Dutta, Complete synchronization of two spirals by a messenger wave in a reaction diffusion system, Chaos 34, 091103 (2024).
- H. Kalita, P. Khan, and S. Dutta, Rotational synchronization of pinned spiral waves, Phys. Rev. E 106, 034201 (2022).
- P. Khan and S. Dutta, Synchronization of corotating spirals anchored to heterogeneities in a chemical system, Eur. Phys. J. Spec. Top. 233, 787 (2024).
- M. Yadome, K.-I. Ueda, and M. Nagayama, Chaotic motion of propagating pulses in the Gray-Scott model, Phys. Rev. E 83, 056207 (2011).
- A. Hagberg and E. Meron, Pattern formation in non-gradient reaction–diffusion systems: The effects of front bifurcations, Nonlinearity 7, 805 (1994).
- Y. Kawamura and H. Nakao, Phase description of oscillatory convection with a spatially translational mode, Physica D 295–296, 11 (2015).
- Y. Kawamura, Phase reduction of limit-torus solutions to partial differential algebraic equations, Phys. Rev. Res. 1, 033130 (2019).
- E. M. Izhikevich, Weakly connected quasi-periodic oscillators, FM interactions, and multiplexing in the brain, SIAM J. Appl. Math. 59, 2193 (1999).
- A. Demir, C. Gu, and J. Roychowdhury, Phase equations for quasi-periodic oscillators, in IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD) (IEEE, Piscataway, 2010), pp. 292–297.
- S. Kawaguchi, Pulse dynamics in a bistable reaction–diffusion system with chemotaxis, Adv. Math. Phys. 2022, 1637071 (2022).
- J. D. Dockery and R. J. Field, Numerical evidence of stationary and breathing concentration patterns in the Oregonator with equal diffusivities, Phys. Rev. E 58, 823 (1998).
- I. Berenstein and C. Beta, Cross-diffusion in the two-variable Oregonator model, Chaos 23, 033119 (2013).
- E. M. Nicola, M. Bär, and H. Engel, Wave instability induced by nonlocal spatial coupling in a model of the light-sensitive Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, Phys. Rev. E 73, 066225 (2006).
- M. Lappa, Rotating Thermal Flows in Natural and Industrial Processes (Wiley, Chichester, 2012).
- M. Ghil, P. Read, and L. Smith, Geophysical flows as dynamical systems: The influence of Hide’s experiments, Astron. Geophys. 51, 4.28 (2010).
- P. L. Read, M. J. Bel, D. W. Johnson, and R. M. Small, Quasi-periodic and chaotic flow regimes in a thermally driven, rotating fluid annulus, J. Fluid Mech. 238, 599 (1992).
- P. L. Read, X. Morice-Atkinson, E. J. Allen, and A. A. Castrejón-Pita, Phase synchronization of baroclinic waves in a differentially heated rotating annulus experiment subject to periodic forcing with a variable duty cycle, Chaos 27, 127001 (2017).
- A. A. Castrejón-Pita and P. L. Read, Synchronization in a pair of thermally coupled rotating baroclinic annuli: Understanding atmospheric teleconnections in the laboratory, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 204501 (2010).
- F. J. R. Eccles, P. L. Read, A. A. Castrejón-Pita, and T. W. N. Haine, Synchronization of modulated traveling baroclinic waves in a periodically forced, rotating fluid annulus, Phys. Rev. E 79, 015202 (2009).
- I. Oshima and Y. Kawamura, Synchronization phenomenon of temperature oscillation in rotating fluid annulus and optimal waveforms of external forcing, Chaos 35, 043116 (2025).
- G. S. Duane, P. J. Webster, and J. B. Weiss, Co-occurrence of northern and southern hemisphere blocks as partially synchronized chaos, J. Atmos. Sci. 56, 4183 (1999).
- K. Ota and T. Aoyagi, Direct extraction of phase dynamics from fluctuating rhythmic data based on a Bayesian approach, arXiv:1405.4126.
- T. Stankovski, A. Duggento, P. V. E. McClintock, and A. Stefanovska, Inference of time-evolving coupled dynamical systems in the presence of noise, Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 024101 (2012).
- T. Arai, Y. Kawamura, and T. Aoyagi, Extracting phase coupling functions between collectively oscillating networks from time-series data, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 91, 124001 (2022).
- T. Arai, Y. Kawamura, and T. Aoyagi, Setting of the poincaré section for accurately calculating the phase of rhythmic spatiotemporal dynamics, Phys. Rev. E 111, 014205 (2025).
- K. Fukami, H. Nakao, and K. Taira, Data-driven transient lift attenuation for extreme vortex gust–airfoil interactions, J. Fluid Mech. 992, A17 (2024).
- K. Yawata, R. Sakuma, K. Fukami, K. Taira, and H. Nakao, Phase autoencoder for rapid data-driven synchronization of rhythmic spatiotemporal patterns, arXiv:2506.12777.
- T. Arai and Y. Kawamura, Data for “phase reduction analysis of traveling breathers in reaction-diffusion systems”, Zenodo (2025), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17164886.