Regime switching in coupled nonlinear systems: sources, prediction, and control

The focus issue intends to provide a holistic view on the origins, prediction, and control of regime switching, which is fundamental to understanding both optimal function and breakdowns in various fields, from brain and gene networks to ecosystems, Earth’s climate, and financial markets. Switching events typically involve abrupt and/or irreversible regime shifts, but may also be a part of cyclic patterns or, as in case of spatiotemporal patterns, evolve more gradually via intermediate regimes with coexisting alternate-state domains. Despite the diversity of local dynamics and interactions, as well as a variety of spatial and temporal scales, switching phenomena typically follow some universal scenarios associated with exceeding different types of thresholds and manifest qualitatively similar dynamical and statistical fingerprints and precursors. This focus issue aims to: advance understanding of various switching scenarios by harnessing recent advances in reduction approaches to coupled systems and stochastic multiple timescale modeling; catalyze research on early-warning indicators of switching beyond tipping of equilibria, and including spatially extended systems; support development of theory-informed control strategies to induce the desired and suppress the unfavorable regime switches; and advance the data-driven approaches to allow for description, prediction, and control of regime switching in applications, and establish a stronger connection between theory and real observation data in nature and experiments.

Topics covered include, but are not limited to:

Guest Editors

Igor Franović – Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia

Richard Sebastian Eydam – RIKEN Center for Brain Science, Japan

Deniz Eroglu – Kadir Has University, Turkey

Jeroen S.W. Lamb – Imperial College London, UK