Mechanism for intensity-induced chimera states in globally coupled oscillators

We identify the mechanism behind the existence of intensity-induced chimera states in globally coupled oscillators. We find that the effect of intensity in the system is to cause multistability by increasing the number of fixed points. This in turn increases the number of multistable attractors, and we find that their stability is determined by the strength of coupling. This causes the coexistence of different collective states in the system depending upon the initial state. We demonstrate that intensity-induced chimera is generic to both periodic and chaotic systems. We discuss possible applications of our results to real-world systems like the brain and spin torque nano-oscillators.