Asymmetric dynamic interaction shifts synchronized frequency of coupled oscillators

Interacting dynamic agents can often exhibit synchronization. It has been reported that the rhythm all agents agree on in the synchronized state could be different from the average of intrinsic rhythms of individual agents. Hinted by such a real-world behavior of the interaction-driven change of the average phase velocity, we propose a modified version of the Kuramoto model, in which the ith oscillator of the phase ϕ(i) interacts with other oscillator j only when the phase difference [Formula: see text] − [Formula: see text] is in a limited range [−βπ, απ]. From extensive numerical investigations, we conclude that the asymmetric dynamic interaction characterized by β ≠ α leads to the shift of the synchronized frequency with respect to the original distribution of the intrinsic frequency. We also perform and report our computer-based synchronization experiment, which exhibits the expected shift of the synchronized frequency of human participants. In analogy to interacting runners, our result roughly suggests that agents tend to run faster if they are more influenced by runners ahead than behind. We verify the observation by using a simple model of interacting runners.