Transient Uncoupling Induces Synchronization

Finding conditions that support synchronization is a fertile and active area of research with applications across multiple disciplines. Here we present and analyze a scheme for synchronizing chaotic dynamical systems by transiently uncoupling them. Specifically, systems coupled only in a fraction of their state space may synchronize even if fully coupled they do not. While for many standard systems coupling strengths need to be bounded to ensure synchrony, transient uncoupling removes this bound and thus enables synchronization in an infinite range of effective coupling strengths. The presented coupling scheme therefore opens up the possibility to induce synchrony in (biological or technical) systems whose parameters are fixed and cannot be modified continuously.