The chimera in Greek mythology was a fire-breathing monster composed of incongruous parts: a lion’s head, a goat’s head, and a serpent’s head; in networks, chimeras are similar mixtures of incongruous dynamical behaviour. In a chimera state, a network has regions that are highly synchronised (coherent or ordered) and regions that are highly desynchronised (incoherent), side-by-side. A useful mathematical model is a set of coupled oscillators – you might think of a network of masses on springs connected together, with oscillations in one part of a network triggering reaction across all connected nodes. In this case, a chimera state may involve some of the oscillators vibrating together, in synchrony, while others oscillate in an uncorrelated, desynchronised way. These states exhibit spontaneous symmetry breaking.
In Greek mythology, the chimera was a fire-breathing
monster having a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s
tail. Today the word refers to anything composed of
incongruous parts, or anything that seems fantastical.
D M. Abrams and S H Strogatz
Chimera States for Coupled Oscillators
Phys Rev Lett 93, 174102 (20014)
Chasing chimeras: control of complex networks
https://researchfeatures.com/2018/02/27/chasing-chimeras-control-complex-networks/
Professor-Eckehard-Scholl-Berlin-University-Mathematics.pdf
Anna Zakharova
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ASfv6CQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate https://www.itp.tu-berlin.de/schoell/nlds/members/senior_scientists/zakharova0/ https://arxiv.org/search/?searchtype=author&query=Zakharova%2C+A
Eckehard Schöll
https://www.itp.tu-berlin.de/schoell/nlds/home/parameter/en/ https://www.itp.tu-berlin.de/schoell/nlds/members/arbeitsgruppenleiter/schoell_eng/parameter/en/
extras
D M. Abrams and S H Strogatz Chimera States for Coupled Oscillators Phys Rev Lett 93, 174102 (20014)
https://static.squarespace.com/static/5436e695e4b07f1e91b30155/t/544527b5e4b052501dee30c9/1413818293807/chimera-states-for-coupled-oscillators.pdf