Network synchronization in a population of star-coupled fractional nonlinear oscillators

The topic of fractional calculus is enjoying growing interest among mathematicians, physicists and engineers in recent years. For complex network consisting of more than two fractional-order systems, however, it is difficult to establish its synchronization behavior. In this Letter, we study the synchronized motions in a star network of coupled fractional-order systems in which the major element is coupled to each of the noninteracting individual elements. On the basis of the stability theory of linear fractional-order differential equations, we derive a sufficient condition for the stability of the synchronization behavior in such a network. Furthermore, we verify our theoretical results by numerical simulations of star-coupled network with fractional-order chaotic nodes. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.