Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 223, 697-705 (2014)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2014-02135-9

Regular Article

Experimental and numerical study on the basin stability of the coupled metronomes

¹ State Key Lab of Information Photonics and Optical Communications, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
² School of Science, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China
³ School of Science, Jiangxi University of Science and Technology, Ganzhou 341000, China

^a e-mail: jhxiaobupt@163.com

Received: 17 March 2014
Revised: 18 March 2014
Published online: 28 April 2014

Abstract

The basin stability is an effective parameter to measure the stability of multistable system under perturbations. In this paper, we try to explore the effects of the coupling strength on the basin stability of the coupled metronomes. In two coupled non-identical metronomes, the coupling strength linearly decreases the basin stability of in-phase synchronization while increases that of the anti-phase synchronization. In three coupled metronomes, there are rich coexisting collectively dynamics as in-phase, anti-phase synchronization, quasi-period states and period 4 states. The coupling strength may still change the basin stability of these coexisting dynamics states. The results are observed in experimental systems and numerical models. Our findings are significant on understanding the multistable dynamics under noisy environment.