Friday, December 9, 2011, 3pm
Innovation Hall room 136

Carson Chow
Laboratory of Biological Modeling, NIDDK, NIH

Kinetic Theory of Coupled Oscillators

Coupled oscillators arise in contexts as diverse as the brain, synchronized flashing of fireflies, coupled Josephson junctions, or unstable modes of the Millennium bridge in London.  Generally, such systems are either studied for a small number of oscillators or in the infinite oscillator, mean field limit.  The dynamics of large but finite networks of oscillators is largely unknown.  Kinetic theory was developed by Boltzmann and Maxwell to show how microscopic Hamiltonian dynamics of particles could account for the thermodynamic properties of gases.  Here, I will show how concepts of kinetic theory can be applied to understand large but finite deterministic coupled oscillator systems.