Phase synchronization in small-world networks of chaotic oscillators

Small-world networks are highly clustered networks with small average distance among the vertices. There are many natural and technological networks that present this kind of connections. We study the phase synchronization of small-world chaotic oscillator networks in this paper. We find that for Rossler oscillator networks, in the synchronous regime, the oscillation phases are locked, while the amplitudes vary chaotically. We further show the dependence of phase synchronization on the network coupling strength, the product of the shortcuts-adding probability and the number of chaotic oscillators, as well as the maximal frequency mismatch. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.