Imperfect traveling chimera states induced by local synaptic gradient coupling

In this paper, we report the occurrence of chimera patterns in a network of neuronal oscillators, which are coupled through local, synaptic gradient coupling. We discover a new chimera pattern, namely the imperfect traveling chimera state, where the incoherent traveling domain spreads into the coherent domain of the network. Remarkably, we also find that chimera states arise even for one-way local coupling, which is in contrast to the earlier belief that only nonlocal, global, or nearest-neighbor local coupling can give rise to chimera state; this find further relaxes the essential connectivity requirement of getting a chimera state. We choose a network of identical bursting Hindmarsh-Rose neuronal oscillators, and we show that depending upon the relative strength of the synaptic and gradient coupling, several chimera patterns emerge. We map all the spatiotemporal behaviors in parameter space and identify the transitions among several chimera patterns, an in-phase synchronized state, and a global amplitude death state.