Abstract

Coherent-incoherent motions known as chimera states have recently sparked substantial interest in the nonlinear dynamics community. Recent findings show that chimera states may appear in a wide range of natural phenomena. In the present contribution, we exploit the analogy between delayed-feedback systems and symmetric networks of nonlinear oscillators in this context. We demonstrate the existence of two-dimensional chimera states created in a system consisting of two long delays, where one delay exceeds the other by two orders of magnitude.We present the first experimental demonstration of 2D chimera states in nonlinear delay systems and obtain an excellent agreement between numerical simulations and the experiment. Observed chimeras are highly robust, i.e. are stable with respect to the noise in the experimental setup and exist for a wide range of parameters. Results can potentially be applied in multiple areas including power grids, optical memory, and neuromorphic computing.