Thermodynamic criticality of coupled oscillators

Abstract

Strict thermodynamic scaling relations, such as the Rushbrooke inequality, are fundamentally established for equilibrium critical phenomena in the thermodynamic limit. In finite-size dynamical systems exhibiting synchronization, the direct application of such identities is hindered both by the finiteness of the network and the nonequilibrium nature of the spontaneous synchronization transition. To bypass this difficulty, we rigorously study the dynamical counterparts of the order parameter, susceptibility, and specific heat in finite systems of dynamical oscillators with nonlinear coupling. By measuring these quantities as a function of system size, we extract the associated critical exponents governing the transition. The validity of our thermodynamic mapping is tested by directly confirming the Rushbrooke inequality. Our results establish that standard equilibrium thermodynamic scaling architectures can be systematically applied to the finite-size scaling of nonequilibrium synchronization dynamics.