Stability of Phase Difference Trajectories of Networks of Kuramoto Oscillators with Time-Varying Couplings and Intrinsic Frequencies

We study dynamics of phase differences (PDs) of coupled oscillators where both the intrinsic frequencies and the couplings vary in time. In the case the coupling coefficients are all nonnegative, we prove that the PDs are asymptotically stable if there exists T > 0 such that the aggregation of the time-varying graphs across any time interval of length T has a spanning tree. We also consider the situation that the coupling coefficients may be negative and provide sufficient conditions for the asymptotic stability of the PD dynamics. Due to time variations, the PDs are asymptotic to time-varying patterns rather than constant values. Hence, the PD dynamics can be regarded as a generalization of the well-known phase-locking phenomena. We explicitly investigate several particular cases of time-varying graph structures, including asymptotically periodic PDs due to periodic coupling coefficients and intrinsic frequencies, small perturbations, and fast-switching near constant coupling and frequencies, which lead to PD dynamics close to a phase-locked one. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate the theoretical results.