Experimental Kuramoto platform.

Abstract

Phase reduction provides a principled relationship between high-dimensional oscillator dynamics and low-dimensional phase models such as the Kuramoto model. However, connecting analytical results derived from the Kuramoto framework to experimental data remains an open challenge, as many physical platforms violate the weak-coupling assumptions underlying standard phase reduction. Here, we present an experimental platform based on electronic quadrature oscillators whose phase dynamics are, under certain assumptions, equivalent to the Kuramoto model. Crucially, this equivalence is achieved for both weak and strong coupling through a nondiffusive coupling circuit, and the design approach supports arbitrary (weighted and directed) network topologies while preserving scalability and oscillation regularity. Across different coupling schemes, we demonstrate that the platform reliably reproduces phase transitions predicted by the Kuramoto model for both global and cluster synchronization. This cost-effective platform enables systematic experimental validation of analytical and numerical results for synchronization in complex networks.