Shear, Not Coherence, Organizes chaotic response under Higher-Order Coupling

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Author: Luo, Kaiming
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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author Luo, Kaiming
author_facet Luo, Kaiming
contents What dynamical quantity is actually controlled by higher-order interactions in chaotic oscillator networks remains unclear. In amplitude-active systems, chaos is often interpreted through coherence, yet coherence is not the quantity that governs instability. In this work, we study a minimal globally coupled quartet of nonisochronous Stuart-Landau oscillators with pairwise and symmetric three-body interactions. The pairwise baseline already supports a connected chaotic branch, and higher-order coupling reconstructs rather than creates this irregular dynamics. We show that chaos is organized not by phase coherence but by effective-frequency shear: higher-order coupling regulates amplitude heterogeneity, which nonisochronicity converts into shear, and shear controls how chaos is expressed under higher-order coupling. The Lyapunov response collapses onto a reduced shear-based description, revealing an indirect control pathway. These results establish that higher-order interactions control chaos only indirectly, by regulating an amplitude-shear mechanism rather than acting directly on synchrony.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2604_07842
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Shear, Not Coherence, Organizes chaotic response under Higher-Order Coupling
Luo, Kaiming
Chaotic Dynamics
What dynamical quantity is actually controlled by higher-order interactions in chaotic oscillator networks remains unclear. In amplitude-active systems, chaos is often interpreted through coherence, yet coherence is not the quantity that governs instability. In this work, we study a minimal globally coupled quartet of nonisochronous Stuart-Landau oscillators with pairwise and symmetric three-body interactions. The pairwise baseline already supports a connected chaotic branch, and higher-order coupling reconstructs rather than creates this irregular dynamics. We show that chaos is organized not by phase coherence but by effective-frequency shear: higher-order coupling regulates amplitude heterogeneity, which nonisochronicity converts into shear, and shear controls how chaos is expressed under higher-order coupling. The Lyapunov response collapses onto a reduced shear-based description, revealing an indirect control pathway. These results establish that higher-order interactions control chaos only indirectly, by regulating an amplitude-shear mechanism rather than acting directly on synchrony.
title Shear, Not Coherence, Organizes chaotic response under Higher-Order Coupling
topic Chaotic Dynamics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.07842