Phase synchronization between collective rhythms of fully locked oscillator groups.

A system of coupled oscillators can exhibit a rich variety of dynamical behaviors. When we investigate the dynamical properties of the system, we first analyze individual oscillators and the microscopic interactions between them. However, the structure of a coupled oscillator system is often hierarchical, so that the collective behaviors of the system cannot be fully clarified by simply analyzing each element of the system. For example, we found that two weakly interacting groups of coupled oscillators can exhibit anti-phase collective synchronization between the groups even though all microscopic interactions are in-phase coupling. This counter-intuitive phenomenon can occur even when the number of oscillators belonging to each group is only two, that is, when the total number of oscillators is only four. In this paper, we clarify the mechanism underlying this counter-intuitive phenomenon for two weakly interacting groups of two oscillators with global sinusoidal coupling.