View article

We experimentally and theoretically investigate the dynamics of inhibitory coupled self-driven oscillators on a star network in which a single central hub node is connected to peripheral arm nodes. The system consists of water-in-oil Belousov-Zhabotinsky emulsion drops contained in storage wells etched in silicon wafers. We observed three dynamical attractors by varying the number of arms in the star graph and the coupling strength: (i) unlocked, uncorrelated phase shifts between all oscillators; (ii) locked, arm hubs synchronized in phase with a -dependent phase shift between the arm and central hub; and (iii) center silent, a central hub stopped oscillating and the arm hubs oscillated without synchrony. We compare experiment to theory. For case (ii), we identified a logarithmic dependence of the phase shift on star degree, and were able to discriminate between contributions to the phase shift arising …