Dear all, This week, Friday May 29, Zachary Nicolaou (Northwestern University) will give a talk at 11am via Zoom. Note the unusual time. Zoom link: https://uni-sydney.zoom.us/j/99531691151 Meeting ID: 995 3169 1151 Title: Critical Switching in Globally Attractive Chimeras Abstract: We report on a new type of chimera state that attracts almost all initial conditions and exhibits power-law switching behavior in networks of coupled oscillators. Such switching chimeras consist of two symmetric configurations, which we refer to as subchimeras, in which one cluster is synchronized and the other is incoherent. Despite each subchimera being linearly stable, switching chimeras are extremely sensitive to noise: Arbitrarily small noise triggers and sustains persistent switching between the two symmetric subchimeras. The average switching frequency scales as a power law with the noise intensity, which is in contrast with the exponential scaling observed in typical stochastic transitions. Rigorous numerical analysis reveals that the power-law switching behavior originates from intermingled basins of attraction associated with the two subchimeras, which, in turn, are induced by chaos and symmetry in the system. The theoretical results are supported by experiments on coupled optoelectronic oscillators, which demonstrate the generality and robustness of switching chimeras. Past talks can be viewed on the YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZqgDJ21wbdzMbeIdealpUg/ I hope to see you all online. Lachlan