Nature of the phase-flip transition in the synchronized approach to amplitude death

Abstract

We study the dynamics of time-delay coupled limit-cycle oscillators in the amplitude death regime. Through a detailed analysis of the Jacobian at the fixed point, we show that the phase-flip transition, namely, the abrupt change from in-phase synchronized dynamics to antiphase synchronized dynamics, is associated with an interchange of the imaginary parts of complex pairs of eigenvalues at an “avoided crossing” of Lyapunov exponents as a parameter is varied. An order parameter for the transition is constructed through the eigenvectors of the Jacobian.