Dynamical systems defined on simplicial complexes: Symmetries, conjugacies, and invariant subspaces.

We consider the general model for dynamical systems defined on a simplicial complex. We describe the conjugacy classes of these systems and show how symmetries in a given simplicial complex manifest in the dynamics defined thereon, especially with regard to invariant subspaces in the dynamics.

Consensus on simplicial complexes: Results on stability and synchronization.

We consider a nonlinear flow on simplicial complexes related to the simplicial Laplacian and show that it is a generalization of various consensus and synchronization models commonly studied on networks. In particular, our model allows us to formulate flows on simplices of any dimension so that it includes edge flows, triangle flows, etc. We show that the system can be represented as the gradient flow of an energy functional and use this to deduce the stability of various steady states of the model. Finally, we demonstrate that our model contains higher-dimensional analogs of structures seen in related network models.

Configurational stability for the Kuramoto-Sakaguchi model.

The Kuramoto-Sakaguchi model is a generalization of the well-known Kuramoto model that adds a phase-lag paramater or "frustration" to a network of phase-coupled oscillators. The Kuramoto model is a flow of gradient type, but adding a phase-lag breaks the gradient structure, significantly complicating the analysis of the model. We present several results determining the stability of phase-locked configurations: the first of these gives a sufficient condition for stability, and the second a sufficient condition for instability. In fact, the instability criterion gives a count, modulo 2, of the dimension of the unstable manifold to a fixed point and having an odd count is a sufficient condition for instability of the fixed point. We also present numerical results for both small ( N ≤ 10 ) and large ( N = 50 ) collections of Kuramoto-Sakaguchi oscillators.

Finite-size effects and switching times for Moran process with mutation.

We consider the Moran process with two populations competing under an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma in the presence of mutation, and concentrate on the case where there are multiple evolutionarily stable strategies. We perform a complete bifurcation analysis of the deterministic system which arises in the infinite population size. We also study the Master equation and obtain asymptotics for the invariant distribution and metastable switching times for the stochastic process in the case of large but finite population. We also show that the stochastic system has asymmetries in the form of a skew for parameter values where the deterministic limit is symmetric.

Phase-locked patterns of the Kuramoto model on 3-regular graphs.

We consider the existence of non-synchronized fixed points to the Kuramoto model defined on sparse networks: specifically, networks where each vertex has degree exactly three. We show that "most" such networks support multiple attracting phase-locked solutions that are not synchronized and study the depth and width of the basins of attraction of these phase-locked solutions. We also show that it is common in "large enough" graphs to find phase-locked solutions where one or more of the links have angle difference greater than π/2.

Fully synchronous solutions and the synchronization phase transition for the finite-N Kuramoto model.

We present a detailed analysis of the stability of phase-locked solutions to the Kuramoto system of oscillators. We derive an analytical expression counting the dimension of the unstable manifold associated to a given stationary solution. From this we are able to derive a number of consequences, including analytic expressions for the first and last frequency vectors to phase-lock, upper and lower bounds on the probability that a randomly chosen frequency vector will phase-lock, and very sharp results on the large N limit of this model. One of the surprises in this calculation is that for frequencies that are Gaussian distributed, the correct scaling for full synchrony is not the one commonly studied in the literature; rather, there is a logarithmic correction to the scaling which is related to the extremal value statistics of the random frequency vector.

Framework for analyzing ecological trait-based models in multidimensional niche spaces.

We develop a theoretical framework for analyzing ecological models with a multidimensional niche space. Our approach relies on the fact that ecological niches are described by sequences of symbols, which allows us to include multiple phenotypic traits. Ecological drivers, such as competitive exclusion, are modeled by introducing the Hamming distance between two sequences. We show that a suitable transform diagonalizes the community interaction matrix of these models, making it possible to predict the conditions for niche differentiation and, close to the instability onset, the asymptotically long time population distributions of niches. We exemplify our method using the Lotka-Volterra equations with an exponential competition kernel.