Open Access

J. C. Alexander, Bernold Fiedler

• We model a symmetric system of coupled oscillators as a graph with symmetry group $\gamma$. Each vertex of the graph represents an "oscillator" or a "cell" of reactants. The magnitude (concentration) of the reactants in the $ i $ th cell is represented by a vector $ x^i $. The edges represent the coupling of the cells. The cells are assumed to evolve by identical reaction-diffusion equation which depends on the sum of the reactants in the nearest neighbors. Thus the dynamics of the system is described by a nonlinear differential system \begin{flushleft} \[ \mbox {(*) \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ } \dot{x}^i = f (x^i,\sum_{j \in N_i} x^j), \mbox { \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ } \] \end{flushleft} where the sum ranges over the set $ N_i $ of neighbors of cell $ i $ . If $ f $ also has a symmetry (e.g., oddness), there are geometric conditions on the graph such that the nonlinear system $ (*) $ decouples globally into a product flow on certain sums of isotropy subspaces. Thus we may detect higher-dimensional tori of solutions of $ (*) $ which are not amenable to other types of analysis. We present a number of examples, such as bipartite graphs, complete graphs, the square, the octahedron, and a 6-dimensional cube.