Switching phenomenon induced by breakdown of chaotic phase synchronization

We investigate chaotic phase synchronization (CPS) in three-coupled chaotic oscillator systems. According to the coupling strength and mismatches in the frequencies of these oscillators, we can observe complete CPS where all three oscillators exhibit CPS, and partial CPS where only two oscillators exhibit CPS. When the coupling strength is weakened, we observe a phenomenon that complete CPS among the three oscillators is suddenly disrupted without going through partial CPS. In this case oscillators exhibit quasi-CPS where two oscillators appear to exhibit CPS transiently, and the combination of the two oscillators changes with time. We call this phenomenon CPS switching D. It is revealed that phase fluctuation plays an important role in CPS switching D. It is also shown that the amplitude with a specific structure strengthens the degree of CPS switching. In the present paper, we characterize this CPS switching and discuss its mechanism.