Synchronization by small time delays

Synchronization is a phenomenon observed in all of the living and in much of the non-living world, for example in the heart beat, Huygens’ clocks, the flashing of fireflies and the clapping of audiences. Depending on the number of degrees of freedom involved, different mathematical approaches have been used to describe it, most prominently integrate-and-fire oscillators and the Kuramoto model of coupled oscillators. In the present work, we study a very simple and general system of smoothly evolving oscillators, which continue to interact even in the synchronized state. We find that under very general circumstances, synchronization generically occurs in the presence of a (small) time delay. Strikingly, the synchronization time is inversely proportional to the time delay.