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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 51: Networks: From Topology to Dynamics – Part III (joint session DY/SOE)
DY 51.2: Talk
Thursday, March 12, 2026, 11:30–11:45, ZEU/0118
Ponderomotive Route to Tipping in Open Networks — Seungjae Lee1, •Marisa Fischer1, and Marc Timme1,2,3 — 1Chair for Network Dynamics, Institute of Theoretical Physics and Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed), Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany — 2Center Synergy of Systems, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany — 3Lakeside Labs, Lakeside B04b, 9020 Klagenfurt, Austria
External fluctuations impact the dynamics of complex networked systems, from cells and ecosystems to engineered infrastructures. Strong external forcing may cause tipping that compromises such systems’ functionality. Here, we identify a generic ponderomotive route to tipping in open, periodically driven systems. Upon increasing the driving amplitude, the time-average of the oscillatory responses persistently shifts away from the original system’s operating point – a system-level ponderomotive effect. We characterize the shift as the fixed-point solution of a slow dynamics resulting from a two-time-scale analysis. A bifurcation point of the shift defines the tipping point beyond which the system settles into another collective state, diverges gradually, or exhibits finite-time blow-up. The ponderomotive shift together with its bifurcation yields the novel type of ponderomotive tipping. It generically emerges across disparate systems from science and engineering and is independent of their diverse post-tipping dynamics.
Keywords: Open networks; Nonlinear dynamics; Non-equilibrium dynamics; Critical transitions; Tipping