Periodic Perturbation of Chemical Oscillators: Entrainment and Induced Synchronization

It is well known that a large number of catalyst‐carrying beads immersed in an oscillatory chemical medium (Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction) display collective oscillatory behavior. Using a light sensitive version of BZ, we show that this collective behavior can be entrained to an external light source with an oscillatory intensity. Thus, the emerging collective behavior can be controlled by an external perturbation. Entrainment: The dynamics of globally coupled light sensitive oscillators is controlled by entraining the oscillators to an external periodic light perturbation (see figure). Entrainment occurs with different ratios of the perturbation period to the collective oscillatory period, including 1:1 and 1:2. Moreover, the entrainment induces synchronization for regimes of low coupling strength where in the absence of the external perturbation no collective behavior is observed.