Figure 1

The Kuramoto order parameter (3) encodes the level of synchrony of a phase oscillator population. The state of each oscillator is given by a phase \(\theta _{k}\) (black dot, empty arrow) on the circle \(\mathbb {T}\). Panel (a) shows a configuration with high synchrony where \(R= \vert Z\vert \lessapprox1\). Panel (b) shows two configurations with \(R= \vert Z\vert \gtrapprox0\): one where the oscillators are approximately uniformly distributed on the circle, the other one where they are organized into two clusters