Globally exponential synchronization and synchronizability for general dynamical networks.

The globally exponential synchronization problem for general dynamical networks is considered in this paper. One quantity will be distilled from the coupling matrix to characterize the synchronizability of the corresponding dynamical networks. The calculation of such a quantity is very convenient even for large-scale networks. The network topology is assumed to be directed and weakly connected, which implies that the coupling configuration matrix can be asymmetric, weighted, or reducible. This assumption is more consistent with the realistic network in practice than the constraint of symmetry and irreducibility. By using the Lyapunov functional method and the Kronecker product techniques, some criteria are obtained to guarantee the globally exponential synchronization of general dynamical networks. In addition, numerical examples, including small-world and scale-free networks, are given to demonstrate the theoretical results. It will be shown that our criteria are available for large-scale dynamical networks.