Noise-Induced and Control of Collective Behavior in a Population of Coupled Chemical Oscillators

Synchronization of intercommunicating individual oscillators is an important form of collective behavior used in nature as a mechanism to face dangers, act collectively, and communicate. The involvement of the medium where oscillators exist is an important ingredient. Because of their nature and their multiple different components, the medium and the environment are often perceived as stochastic relative to the deterministic nature of the individuals on some scale. This injects energy/matter into the system in ways that can enhance or de-enhance communication in a stochastic manner. Here we experimentally consider a large number of coupled nonlinear-chemical oscillators under the effect of a controlled normally distributed noise. Experiments show that the collective behavior of the oscillator is triggered by this stochastic perturbation, and we observe the dependence on the noise parameters. Our results point to the potential use of environmental fluctuations in determining the emergence and properties of collective behaviors in complex systems.